While Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton made front page news across the world this year thanks to the US Elections, it’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi who’s won the online reader’s poll for TIME Person of the Year.
This is the second time Modi has won the popular vote. He was also the top reader’s choice for the title in 2014, but was not eventually named the TIME Person of the Year, which is finally decided by the US magazine’s editors.
2016 has been an eventful year for Modi. India ratified the Paris Climate Change Agreement and his government took the big move of demonetising high-value rupee notes. He’s attempting to manage a deep slump in the Indo-Pak relationship and India made the unprecedented move of announcing that it had carried out surgical strikes against terrorist launchpads across the Line of Control.
With 18 percent vote, he was placed well ahead of Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, each of whom had 7 percent votes.
Every year, TIME selects the most influential person (or group of people) of the year from amongst world leaders, artists and politicians, “who have had the largest global impact in that year, for better or for worse.”
This is the fourth year in a row where Modi is among the contenders for the title. In 2013, when he was widely touted to be the one to unseat the ruling Congress party from power, he became the only Indian political leader to be shortlisted.
Even though he was the popular choice in 2014 with more then 16 percent of the total 5 million votes cast, the TIME editors chose Ebola fighters for the title.
The 2015 reader’s poll placed him at the eighth position, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel won the Person of the Year.
An analysis of the poll found that Modi performed particularly well among Indian voters as well as those in California and New Jersey in the USA, earning 17 and 12 percent of all ‘yes’ votes in those states, respectively.
The TIME Person of the Year will be announced on 7 December. It is to be seen whether the publication’s editors will go with the popular choice this time.
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