Monday, November 15, 2010

Unofficial election results: Mon-El projected as new leader

First things first... The Legion Omnicom is projecting Mon-El as the new Legion Leader for election 2010.

The Legion Election is over. According to my unofficial election poll, Mon-El is the new leader with Phantom Girl as the new Deputy. Here are my final results, with over 760 voters (which is a good 2% of the actual readers). Using the Associated Press method of calculating margin of error, the numbers here are likely to be correct to within plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Although Mon-El leads Phantom Girl by only 2.5 points, which is within the margin of error, trends over the course of the polling leads The Omnicom Network to call Mon-El the winner of Legion Election 2010, with Phantom Girl as the runner-up and thus the Deputy Leader.

Official results are still being tallied, and the actual winner will be announced in-story in the issue coming out in December 2010.




Percentage
Votes
Mon-El
16.28%
126
Phantom Girl
13.70%
106
Gates
7.49%
58
Brainiac 5
6.33%
49
Tyroc
5.81%
45
Shadow Lass
5.04%
39
Sensor Girl
4.13%
32
Lightning Lass
3.62%
28
Quislet
3.62%
28
Shrinking Violet
3.49%
27
Polar Boy
3.10%
24
Dream Girl
2.97%
23
Dawnstar
2.58%
20
Element Lad
2.58%
20
Chameleon Boy
2.45%
19
Cosmic Boy
2.20%
17
Timber Wolf
2.20%
17
Ultra Boy
2.07%
16
Earth Man
1.94%
15
Colossal Boy
1.55%
12
Invisible Kid
1.55%
12
Sun Boy
1.55%
12
Tellus
1.42%
11
Wildfire
1.42%
11
Chameleon Girl
0.90%
7


I have to assume that this is a legitimate tally with no shenanigans (though I have heard anecdotal evidence of people voting more than once).

Some observations:
  • Interestingly, Phantom Girl led from day 1 up through about a week before the election closed, when Mon-El surged ahead. I'm not sure what got people voting for him - was there some online effort in a forum that urged voters to choose him or something? Or is it just that more people are familiar with him because of his 21st century "Superman" appearances?
  • Gates' showing here was, I believe, a way of throwing Paul Levitz a curveball - "Let's see what he can do with THIS!" type thing. I voted for Gates for that reason.
  • Tyroc too. When has he been popular enough to have people vote for him? I think this was a vote for "Let's pick the character that Levitz has said that he dislikes the most."
  • Towards the low end of the voting, we have many characters who are actually in the spotlight, like Sun Boy, Earth Man, Ultra Boy, and Polar Boy. That's puzzling, unless these are characters that the readers think are being OVER-used. Yet Brainiac 5, also in the spotlight, is near the top of the votes.
  • Wildfire, second from last? He has always been one of the MOST popular Legionnaires.
Now, on the other hand, not sure how Mon-El and Phantom Girl fit when Paul Levitz wrote that he "is busy tearing up his Legion plot charts and figuring out how to accommodate the will of the masses!".

19 comments:

Blue Tyson said...

Not sure anyone would vote for Sun Boy to lead a pub crawl, let alone that?

Anonymous said...

I voted for Sun Boy and would do so again. In first and second Levitz Sun Boy showed strong leadership potential and wasn't just a male bimbo -- I strongly dislike the "Sun Boy is stupid/a terrible leader" meme.

--Chris M.

Blue Tyson said...

Think that is a fact, not a meme. :)

dicecipher said...

Dang it I wanted Gates to win.

Rob said...

Very clever of DC to have a genuine online vote anyway. This has probably generated more buzz and loyalty amongst the fans than just about anything else since the current run began!

Greg Morrow said...

Bah. Dream Girl and Wildfire are clearly the best leader candidates. The voters have spoken ... the bastards.

MaGnUs said...

Mon-El? Ew... how... bland for a leader.

Darrell Lawrence said...

If Mon-El wins, I think the plotting Paul had to tear up is Mon-El becoming the new GL. With him as leader, that can't happen.

Sudro Brown II said...

It doesn't surprise me that Wildfire didn't get much notice in this election. Older readers probably remember what a terrible leader he was way back when and newer readers (those who started reading with the reboot or later) probably don't know him as well as us old fogies. I voted for Sun Boy because he's one of the few early Legionnaires who's never sat in the leader chair and because I thought it would create interesting story dynamics with Earth Man.

herofan said...

I voted for Tyroc just because I wanted to see something done with him. There are no bad characters and I'd like this one to get a fair shot.

Anonymous said...

I will be really interested to see what the actual tally is. I bet there will be more votes than issues sold.

Jonathan L. Miller said...

Shrinking Violet here. I think a term as leader (and, all things considered, I'm not counting v4) would be really good for the character, and I've liked how Levitz has written her since her recovery.

But I can live with Mon-El.

Brainy Pirate said...

If this latest issue is any indication, I'm not sure Mon is the new GL....

Darrell Lawrence said...

And you can tell that... how? This issue was written BEFORE the elections closed.

Brainy Pirate said...

I say that based on the last panel of the issue and who is (and is not) in it -- it suggests that someone else has been chosen.

The speculation above was that Levitz was writing Mon as the new GL and now has to change that storyline. But if this issue was written BEFORE the end of the elections, and if my reading of that panel is correct, then it seems even LESS likely that Levitz meant to make Mon the new GL.

But I could be misreading the last panel....

Darrell Lawrence said...

I may have mis-spoken. That last panel, in this day and age, had enough time to be changed.

Brainy Pirate said...

Ah, good point. I hadn't thought of that possibility...

Troy said...

Mon-el has already been the leader, hasn't he? I wanted someone new. I voted for Phantom Girl.

John said...

I voted for Polar Boy, granted he’s already been leader before, but I have always found the character intriguing