Monday, August 1, 2011

Did you believe in vampires?

Last year, I set up a poll asking readers whether or not they believed in vampires. Let's take a look at the results.


I adjusted the poll to reflect differing interpretations of vampires, which is a source of contention in itself. The informal tone I used for the various 'types' (and reader belief) can be boiled down to the following options:
  1. Traditional, yes ('Bloodsucking corpses? Sure!')
  2. No ('No such thing. At all')
  3. Undecided ('Mmm maybe...')
  4. Themselves, yes ('Believe in them? I am one!')
  5. Traditional, yes; psychic vampires, yes ('Yes, there are undead ones and psychic energy drainers')
  6. Psychic vampires, yes; traditional, no ('Not in the bloodsucking kind, but the ones that drain psychic energy, sure')
  7. Living vampires, yes ('Yes, they're living people who need to drink blood')
Voters were allowed to select multiple answers, but I don't know who voted for what or how many options they chose. The poll received 99 votes before closing on 21 July 2011, 11.59pm.

With hindsight, I probably should have split the polls into two, namely, whether or not a reader believed in vampires (a) and, if so, in what type (b). Nonetheless, the results were interesting in itself.

I'll work in descending order here, so I can tell you that the majority of voters - twenty four (24%) - don't believe in vampires, at all, but 21 voters (21%) believe they're living people who 'need to drink blood'. Meanwhile, 18 of you (18%) were undecided, tying with another 18 (18%) who don't believe in the traditional variety, but do believe in psychic vampires. However, 16 (16%) believed in both types and another fourteen (14%) believe in the traditional type. Lastly, thirteen (13%) believed that they, themselves, were vampires. Let's make those figures more palatable:
  1. Traditional, yes (14%)
  2. No (24%)
  3. Undecided (18%)
  4. Themselves, yes (13%)
  5. Traditional, yes; psychic vampires, yes (16%)
  6. Psychic vampires, yes; traditional, no (18%)
  7. Living vampires, yes (21%)
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all who voted in the poll. Greatly appreciated. It's interesting to see how neck-a-neck the results were, not to mention the credence given to the living vampire type - and the bloodsucking corpse variety too, for that matter.

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