PS4 does have an ownership advantage over the Switch right now. The most recent ownership polls have the PS4 around 69% ownership and the Switch around 58%. I guess this could give the PS4 an advantage in today's poll, but even the PS4's ownership advantage over the Switch couldn't save the PS4 GotY poll from getting less votes than the Switch GotY poll.
The only other reason for today's result is how people are interpreting the poll question. The poll question for System of the Year is a very open-ended question, with no right or wrong way to interpret what the poll is asking you about. Here's 3 potentially viable reasons on how someone decided which option to vote for:
1. Voting for the system you played the most in 2018
Pretty self-explanatory. This makes the most sense as to how someone chose which option to vote for in the poll. If the PS4 actually won today's poll, this is probably why it happened.
2. Voting for the system that is currently your overall favorite right now
Although this does seem similar to the first option, I could see a way in which someone's favorite system wasn't the same system they played the most in 2018. Someone who owns both a PS4 and Switch could be a situation where they spend more time playing games on the PS4 because of the larger overall game library to choose from, but consider the Switch to be their favorite system because it has more of the games they actually love.
Some people also use their PS4 and Switch for totally different purposes, like the PS4 to cover multiplatform releases while the Switch is used for the exclusive games. This could lead to someone accumulating more playtime on the PS4 than the Switch even they don't love the PS4's games as much as the Switch's games. The PS4 is also more likely to have more of the 60+ hour masterpiece games (like RDR2) than a system such as the Switch which is more focused on the Nintendo exclusive games that are generally much quicker to beat. So you might not accumulate as much playtime on Switch compared to PS4 among people who own both systems.
3. Voting for the system that had the strongest game library in 2018
I do see this as the least likely reason for someone to base their vote on, but I could see some people acknowledging the overall strength of a game's library in a given year (2018 in this case) even if they don't own the system. It could be possible for an Xbox One or Switch only owner to go and research the notable games that came out on PS4 and other systems in 2018 and agree that the PS4 had the better games in 2018 even if they don't own a PS4 themselves.
Another thing is that the poll question itself includes the text "BEST OF 2018", which could imply voting for the system that had the best overall game library for that year.
Number 2 is the main reason switch has so many votes. Its clearly the new and hit playform right now. And yeah PS4 does have higher playerbase
Unless you dont own the consoles but choices 1ans 3 should be the reasons to pick your system of th year.
My most played system last year was Xbox one x My fav system is the Xbox one x. But the system I felt had the strongest library was PS4. Most of my playtime on Xbox was with multiplats and BC games.
As for switch. I played for a month at the start of the year when Bayo 2 came out and the last month when smash came out. I barely touched it outside of that apart from replaying last years games here and there. ---
