How our polls work
Politics at Work runs one question at a time, drawn from the biggest news story of the day. The rules below are the whole system — no hidden weighting, no editorial lean, no fine print.
How is each question chosen?
Every day we scan the top US news headlines from licensed news feeds. We rank them by civic significance, write a neutral yes-or-no question with a strongest-case argument for each side, and review it before it goes live. Neutrality is checked before publication: if you can guess which side the site favors, the question is rewritten.
Who can vote, and how many times?
Anyone can vote, no account needed. One vote per person per poll, enforced by anonymized network signals and an invisible bot check. We never store raw IP addresses — only a salted, irreversible hash.
Are these polls scientific?
No, and we say so on every result. Our tallies reflect the opinions of people who chose to vote, not a weighted sample of the population. They are a public pulse, not a prediction.
When are results published?
The live tally is visible immediately after you vote. The final tally is published permanently on its own page when the poll closes, usually within three to seven days, and is free to cite with attribution and a link.
Where do the headlines come from?
From the original publishers, via licensed news data feeds. We display the publisher's name and link to the original article on every poll. We never republish article text.
Our neutrality rule
The question must be written so a reader cannot tell which side the site favors, and every poll carries a strongest-case argument for both sides. The moment we look partisan, the tally stops being worth anything — so neutrality is not a value statement, it is the product.