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Votes in favour, but not history: Why Modi may not be Time’s Person of the Year
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has won the online poll for Time Person of the Year, but the reader’s choice winner hasn’t won the actual title in the last decade.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi may have left his competitors far behind in winning the reader’s poll of the Time Magazine’s person of the year but his supporters shouldn’t get too happy.
The winner of the popular online poll has never gone on to win the actual Time Magazine’s Person of the Year title – decided with editorial intervention -- in the past decade.
For example, the last time Modi won the popular vote two years ago, the Time Person of the Year title went to Ebola Fighters, a broad group of doctors, nurses, ambulance workers, healthcare professionals and volunteers who helped stop the spread of the deadly virus in Africa.
Similarly, last year, the reader’s poll was won by the wildly popular democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders – riding on a wave of youth popularity – but the Time Person of the Year was German Chancellor Angela Merkel for her role in steering Europe through the Greek debt crisis and a mounting refugee problem.
Many often say that the reader’s poll – which is solely the aggregate of people’s votes online -- is easily manipulated and can be skewed by a large proportion of votes from certain regions.
For example, this year Time magazine put out the fact that Modi’s victory was fuelled by large number of votes from India, California and New Jersey.
The reader’s poll has also run into controversy in the past. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un won the reader’s poll in 2012 amid widespread allegations of voter fraud and online vote manipulations. British media reported internet forum 4Chan rigged the results with more than five million bogus votes.
This wasn’t the first time the forum hacked into the magazine’s website. It managed to make its founder, Christopher ‘moot’ Poole win the popular poll in 2009.
The reader’s poll is usually used by the editors to gauge global mood before deciding on the Person of the Year, a title reserved for the person or group of people with the “largest global impact” over the past 12 months.
