Privacy & methodology

What these results are

Results on this site come from people who chose to respond via a link, for example on X. Unlike opinion polls by news organizations, respondents are not randomly selected. Differences in age, location and interest among respondents show up directly in the results, so a gap between these results and an opinion poll does not by itself mean either one is wrong.

How we limit duplicate votes

• Per device: we store a cookie containing a random identifier on the device that voted, and do not accept a second vote from the same device.
• Per connection: votes from the same connection (the first 64 bits for IPv6, the address for IPv4) are capped (IPv6: 3, IPv4: 5). The cap is not exactly one because family members and coworkers often share a connection.
• Bots: Cloudflare Turnstile blocks automated voting.

“Excluding repeat connections” on the results page leaves out the second and later votes from the same connection. If it is close to the overall result, duplicate voting had little effect. Without sign-in, “one person, one vote” cannot be guaranteed. Polls with few votes are more easily skewed by a few people voting repeatedly.

What we store

• The option you chose, the age and gender you optionally gave, and the time of your vote
• The country estimated from your connection (country code only)
• Your IP address and cookie value transformed with a secret key known only to the server (HMAC-SHA256). The original IP address is never stored. The value differs for each poll, so votes in different polls cannot be linked.
• The same kind of transformed value for the connection that created a poll (to limit how many polls can be created per day) and for connections that report a poll (to prevent duplicate reports)

These transformed values are deleted 30 days after a poll closes. The aggregated results remain.

We do not use this information to identify individuals and do not share it with third parties.