Example polls
Paste any of these into the message box in Slack.
Choice poll. A quick plurality vote where any winner is fine.
/poll "Team lunch on Friday: where?" "Thai" "Pizza" "Burritos" limit 1 close after 2 hours
Premium: vote limits, closing automatically
Limit votes: 1 per personClose automatically: after 2 hours
Choice poll. With two options, plurality and majority give the same answer.
/poll "Ship the redesign this week?" "Yes" "No" limit 1 anonymous close after 1 day
Premium: vote limits, closing automatically
AnonymousLimit votes: 1 per personClose automatically: after 1 day
Plurality is not majority
A majority means more than half the votes. A plurality just means more than any other option. With two options they're the same thing. With three, the winner can have 34%.
Example: 10 people choose a team name. "Atlas" gets 4 votes, "Relay" 3 and "Beacon" 3. Atlas wins under plurality. If the six Relay and Beacon voters all prefer either of those to Atlas, most of the team got their last choice. That's vote splitting.
When plurality is fine
- Two options. Plurality and majority agree.
- Low-stakes, quick calls where any winner is acceptable: lunch, a playlist, a background for the team photo.
- When one option is clearly ahead.
When three or more options are close and the decision matters, use ranked-choice voting, which keeps eliminating the last-placed option until one has a majority.
Running a plurality vote in Slack
A Simple Poll choice poll lets people pick several options by default, which is
approval voting. For one vote per person, add limit 1
(Premium). On the Free plan you can ask people to pick one in the question, but the poll
won't enforce it. Add close after (Premium) so the count is final at a known time.
Questions
What happens on a tie?
Plurality has no built-in tie-break. Agree one before you post (a run-off between the tied options, or the owner decides) and say so in the question.
Is plurality the same as first-past-the-post?
Yes, for a single winner. First-past-the-post is the common name in elections.
Related
- What is a single-choice poll?
A single-choice poll lets each voter pick exactly one option. The result shows how a group splits when everyone has to commit to a single answer.
- What is approval voting?
Approval voting lets each voter pick every option they find acceptable, as many as they like. The option with the most approvals wins.
- What is ranked-choice voting?
Ranked-choice voting asks each voter to put the options in order of preference instead of picking just one. The term usually means instant-runoff counting: the last-placed option is eliminated round by round until one option has a majority.
- How to limit votes in a Slack poll
By default, a Simple Poll lets each person pick as many options as they like. That's right for "which days can you make?" and wrong for "which date should we pick?". A vote limit caps how many options each person can choose: limit 1 for single choice, limit 2 or more for "pick your top two". Vote limits are a Premium feature.