Do you guys realize how hypocritical you guys are being? Think about all the people who say "The contests are dumb and pointless and forgetable, who cares about them?" And you think the people who say that are obviously stupid, because the contests are actually really interesting, right?
Now, just replace the word "contest" with the word "poll" and that's what everyone in this topic is saying. And believe it or not, there are those of us who find the polls to be interesting. That is the ONLY reason to dislike the contests: because they replace the polls. So, if you're someone who finds the polls interesting, and the contests boring, then that means contest = bad.
To the guy who said the polls are "predictable": Don't people say the same exact thing about the contests? And the response to those people is always "Then why aren't you winning?" I bet that if I asked you to predict the results of every poll, there's no way you'd be able to. So don't call them predictable.
To me, it's interesting to see a new statistic every day. How many people own X, how many people make X life choice, etc. It's not interesting to me to see that some random character is more popular than some other random character...for 2 months.