How Popdoxa rankings work

Who counts

Only verified voters — people who confirmed a phone number — affect public rankings. Anonymous picks are your own until you save them; they never change a public number. “Can’t say” is always available and never counts as a preference.

How ranking works

Every matchup is a head-to-head comparison. We fit a Bradley-Terry model over all active verified votes: each candidate gets a strength score, and the probability that A beats B depends on the gap between their strengths. Rank comes from model strength, not raw win percentage — beating strong opponents counts for more. Small samples are pulled toward the average so two lucky wins can’t crown a leader.

Candidates with fewer than 20 verified comparisons across 5 distinct opponents are labeled Provisional.

What we show

Every leaderboard shows its verification basis, sample size, and when it was refreshed. Win percentages, where shown, are descriptive — the rank order is the model’s.

What we claim

Results describe Popdoxa voters — not residents, not the general population. Phone verification limits duplicate voting; it does not make a sample statistically representative.

Changes

The ranking method is versioned (current: bt-1.0.0). Material changes to the method, thresholds, candidate merges, freezes, and corrections are published on the public ledger.

Rankings are not for sale

Payment can never change matchup serving, vote weight, rank calculation, or integrity status. Ever.