How our polls work

Our polls are unofficial. They do not affect any show.
The only vote that counts is the one run by the broadcaster on its own app.

What we measure

A Clapnumber poll measures what people visiting this page think, at the moment they voted. That is all it is. It is a sentiment reading of our own audience, not a prediction and not a count of the real vote.

How we count

You need an account to vote, and each poll sets how many votes one account may cast per day. We show the share of votes each option has, and we always publish the total number of votes so you can judge the sample for yourself. A poll with forty votes tells you very little, and we would rather you could see that.

How we pick who we think wins

On a running season we publish a ranking of who we think is winning. It is our opinion, worked out from what people are actually doing over the last 7 days, and it is not the show’s vote. Here is the whole formula — an opinion nobody can check is not worth stating.

  • +1Support — a clap, a save vote, a follow. Someone actively backing them.
  • -0.75Being voted against, or nominated. Counted against them, hard: the most-watched housemate in week three is often the one about to leave, and a model that read outrage as popularity would call that person the favourite.
  • +0.15Being talked about at all, whichever way. Airtime is opportunity, but it is worth a fraction of active support.

We have never checked it against a finished season. We hold the winner of sixty-nine past seasons, but nobody measured attention while those seasons were running, so there is nothing to test the formula against. The first season we can honestly score it on is one we measure from the start. Until then it is an argument, not a forecast, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise.

What it cannot tell you

  • Who the broadcaster will actually evict.
  • How many real votes any housemate has received.
  • What the wider public thinks. Our voters are people who happened to visit this page.

Anyone showing you a precise live count of the official vote is making it up. That data is not published by anybody.

Corrections

If we get a fact wrong, we fix it and say so. Reach us through the grievance officer.