Simple poll
Everyone picks one option. The winner is the option with the most top-choice votes. This is fast, but it discards almost everything else the ballot could have told you.
Voting Method Guide
Tideman vs simple polls
If your group decision starts with a shortlist, a one-pick poll is usually weaker than it looks. Tideman is not magic, but it handles overlapping preferences far better when several options appeal to the same people.
Tideman method
Everyone ranks the shortlist. The method compares options head-to-head and locks in the strongest pairwise wins while avoiding cycles.
Where simple polls break down
Imagine a room choosing between two similar co-op games and one unrelated competitive game. In a one-pick poll, the co-op audience can split itself and hand the win to the competitive option even if most players would lose that choice in direct comparisons.
That is the main problem Tideman is solving on this site. The issue is not complexity for its own sake. The issue is preserving preference structure the simple poll throws away.
What Tideman gives you
- Better handling of similar options
- More information from each participant
- A winner that is easier to defend to the room
- Less dependence on first-choice vote concentration
When to use it
Use Tideman when the group already has a shortlist and the options overlap in appeal. That is true for multiplayer games, restaurants, activity lists, and most recurring group decisions where people are choosing among plausible rather than random options.