Asked for its favorite, Jev picks 'Other'

When an r/polls question asks for a favorite and offers an escape option ('Other', 'None'), how often does Jev take the escape instead of naming a favorite, compared with the voters?

result5,580 questions

On 1,375 Reddit polls that ask for a favorite and offer "Other" or "None", Jev's top pick is the escape option 62% of the time; the voters' top pick is the escape option 14% of the time. On average Jev puts 50% of its weight there, voters 16%. Asked what most people would choose, Jev picks the escape option only 5% of the time.

favorites polls62% · 14%

other polls39% · 8%

Jev: escape comes firstvoters: escape comes first

How to read this: Bars compare how often the escape option ("Other", "None") is the top pick: for Jev answering for itself and for the real voters, on favorites polls and on other polls.

1,375 favorites polls and 4,205 other polls with an escape option; 90% intervals: favorites [0.601, 0.644], other [0.373, 0.399]. When Jev does name a favorite in these polls, it is the voters' favorite 57% of the time (522 polls).

In short

Asked for its favorite in Reddit polls, Jev picks "Other" or "None" 62% of the time; the voters' top choice is the escape option on only 14%.
Jev knows people commit: answering for most people, it takes the escape option on just 5% of the 1,375 favorites polls.
When Jev does name a real favorite, it matches the voters' favorite 57% of the time, so the dodge isn't for lack of a sense of what people like.

What the data shows

Homer disappears into bush meme: Jev when a poll asks for its favorite: "Other" (62%) — Jev when a poll asks for its favorite: "Other" (62%)

Jev dodges: its top pick is the escape option on 62% of favorites polls (90% interval 60% to 64%); the voters' top pick is the escape option on 14%.
It knows people don't: asked what most people would pick, it chooses the escape option only 5% of the time.
It's about favorites: on polls with an escape option that don't ask for a favorite, Jev escapes less (39%), though still more than voters there (8%).
When it does commit, it's often right: where Jev names an actual favorite, it's the voters' favorite 57% of the time (522 polls).

What it means, and what it doesn't

Asked for its own favorite, Jev prefers not to have one, even though it knows most people would just answer. That's a distinct habit: not indecision about facts, but reluctance to claim a personal preference. It fits the wider pattern of Jev leaning to the non-committal middle when asked about itself.

It doesn't mean Jev can't pick. Forced into a two-way choice, as in "Jev's head-to-heads are consistent, and overrule its ratings", it chooses consistently. It avoids choosing when a way out is offered.

Caveats

"Other" means something different to voters. Reddit voters who click "Other" often write their real answer in the comments; the poll only counts the click. For Jev, "Other" is the end of the answer. The two aren't quite the same act.
Which polls ask for a favorite. Favorites polls were found by their wording ("favorite", "best" or "prefer"), which misses some and catches a few that aren't.
Poll options are the poll-maker's. The options were written by whoever posted the poll, often leaving out obvious answers, which makes "Other" a reasonable choice more often than it looks.

Jev on this experiment

Would a person find it interesting to read?: Yes77%
Does it describe you?: No53%
Would you have predicted it?: No60%
How fair is the comparison?: The comparison is reasonable
How much should a reader rely on it?: Moderately
Which caveat matters most?: "Other" means something different to voters84%

Why ask this

"What's your favorite sport?" is about as easy as questions get, and most people just answer: tennis, basketball, soccer. A model can hedge instead, picking the safe "Other" or "None" rather than commit to a taste it may not be sure it has.

People ask assistants for preferences and picks all the time, and a model that ducks the question whenever a way out is offered is less useful and harder to read. Reddit's poll communities give thousands of real favorites questions, many with an "Other" or "None" option, and real votes to compare with.

How this was done

The people and the data

Voters in r/polls, a Reddit community for polls, from 2020 to 2024: each poll's archived vote counts, over its 2 to 6 options, keeping only polls with at least 100 votes. The study uses the 1,375 polls that ask for a favorite and offer an escape option, and 4,205 polls with an escape option that ask something else, as a comparison.

What Jev was asked

Each poll exactly as posted:

What's your favorite sport?
Other · Tennis · Basketball · Volleyball · Board games · Football (soccer)

Once for itself, and once with the instruction "Do not give your own view. Choose the answer that most people would give (the most common human answer)". Each was asked with the options in shuffled orders. In this hand-picked example, Jev put 86% on "Other"; 36% of voters picked it.

How it was measured

For each poll, whether the escape option is Jev's top pick, and how much weight it gets, against the voters' shares. The same for Jev's guess of most people, and for polls that don't ask for a favorite.

Where these questions live

5,580 questions across 540 topics of the map; the 16 biggest are shown. Each opens on the map with every question in it.

Every question

All 5,580 questions behind this result, the telling ones first: the examples the analysis points to, then the ones where Jev misses, biggest gap first.

Jev’s own answer

Showing 0 of 5,580