It's hard to make lj polls that are useful for any kind of real--or even quick-and-dirty--data-gathering, even if the data being gathered is not important. I'm on an lj scifi book group that has had trouble using the polls for something as simple as picking the upcoming month's book from a list of options.

I want to reiterate that I don't think that gaudior presented the poll as a scientific one, and I don't think that anyone else who's commented here is assuming that it was; it's just that these are salient points for anyone who is trying to collect data via any poll, for any reason at all; I am actually planning on bookmarking this thread to look at in the future before I do any lj polls on my own journal because I think the discussion was awesome.

Side thought: I got this mental image of gaudior wearing a pristine white lab coat, holding aloft a beaker, clicking "add poll," and saying, "ha-ha, it's scientific now!" :D