Last week we opened voting for this summer’s Approval Ratings, and today we’re going to analyze those numbers.

First, I’d like to note that voting dropped quite a bit this year.  For example, only 316 people voted in the Whit Babcock poll this summer, whereas last summer 1,254 people voted, and 1,564 voted in 2016.  Participation dropped off a little bit between 2016 and 2017, but it dropped off a cliff this year.

We’ve been using the same polling software for two years now (which means we had the same software last summer), and we suspect something’s not right with it. There was a lot more confusion this year about voting, and there were a lot fewer votes cast.

Next year, we’ll switch back to the polling software we used prior to summer 2016, and we’ll present the polls in an easier way to understand. This year, we stacked the polls one on top of the other, and it caused confusion about how to vote. Next year, we’ll break them up and space them out, and we’ll give clearer instructions on how to vote.

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