Lake & Sumter Style Best of the Best: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the Lake & Sumter Style Best of the Best and who runs it?

Lake & Sumter Style Best of the Best is the readers' choice program of Lake & Sumter Style Magazine, a publication serving Lake and Sumter counties in central Florida from its base in Leesburg. The format is familiar local journalism: readers put forward the area favorites they admire, vote among them through the summer, and the top vote getter in each category is crowned the best of the region. Its whole world is the Leesburg, Eustis and Mount Dora area the magazine covers, which keeps the competitive field tight and the winners genuinely local.

Unlike many Florida fan polls of this size, the ballot does not sit on a third-party polling service. It runs on the magazine's own website, at lakeandsumterstyle.com/best-of-the-best-voting/, which means the nomination call, the rules and the results all live under the same roof as the publication itself. The vertical is local best-of, participation is a public vote, and the audience is the magazine's own readership across both counties.

The table gathers the fixed details a supporter usually asks for first. Everything else worth knowing, from the seasonal window to the daily vote rule, is laid out in the sections below.

Which editions have run, and when did the 2026 ballot open?

The program goes back well beyond its recent trail of ballots: Style Magazine has been letting readers crown the best of Lake and Sumter since 2013. Confirmed editions fall in 2023, 2024 and 2026, and the 2026 round kept the summer shape its predecessors followed.

That 2026 cycle ran in two phases. A call for nominations went out through the Style website and the magazine's social media pages, with the nomination window open from April 25 to May 30, a stretch of four weeks. Voting then lasted six weeks, beginning June 1 and ending July 15. By the magazine's own notice, voting is now closed for the 2026 Best of the Best, and attention turns to the results.

One thing the voting page leaves unsettled is the complete slate of categories, so the exact lineup each year is something to confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

How does a supporter cast a vote on the ballot?

Casting a vote is deliberately simple. Once the window opens, a supporter loads the Best of the Best voting page on the magazine's site, reads through the categories on offer, and picks a favorite in each one worth weighing in on. The magazine states its cadence in a single line: you may cast one vote every 24 hours in each category throughout the survey period. That makes the daily return the core habit of any campaign, because a nominee's standing builds one day at a time across every category their backers care about.

Voting costs nothing. The Style ballot lives at lakeandsumterstyle.com/best-of-the-best-voting/, inside the magazine's own domain rather than inside an app or a storefront, and no step of the process asks a supporter to pay. One practical detail goes unprinted by the magazine: whether a sign-in or email step sits in front of the form. A first-time voter should look at the ballot when the window opens and plan around whatever it requests.

How does this two-county ballot sit beside Florida's other best-of polls?

Florida has no shortage of reader ballots, and this one operates in a crowded field. The Best of Florida Awards pitch at statewide scale, while the Best of Miami Readers' Poll, the Best of Orlando, Best of Tallahassee and Best of the Bay each tie themselves to a single metro. Lake & Sumter Style's program is narrower still: it speaks to a pair of neighboring counties and the small cities inside them, where a Leesburg or Mount Dora business can finish first without facing a whole metro's worth of nominees.

A sixth neighbor, the 2024 BEST BUDS Pin Up Paws Calendar Contest, shows the other end of the family, a themed photo fundraiser rather than a broad readers' poll. What sets the Style ballot apart inside this group is its publisher: a county lifestyle magazine running the contest on its own domain, folding the results into its August issues, and pairing a spring nomination call with a midsummer vote. For readers deciding where their daily effort matters most, a smaller pond like this one is often the stronger bet.

How can supporters strengthen a favorite's chances during the window?

The 24-hour rule shapes every serious effort here. Because each backer may return once a day per category until the poll closes in mid-July, the nominees who finish strongest tend to be the ones whose fans treat the ballot as a six-week routine rather than a single click. A restaurant in Leesburg or a shop in Eustis can remind customers at the counter, on receipts and through social posts that a fresh vote is available each day.

The magazine asks only for fair participation, so straightforward outreach is always the first move. Campaign planners weighing outside help can start with the online votes guide, and award-style options are described on buy award votes. Whichever route a campaign considers, no vote service can promise a finishing position, and the magazine's Rules and Guidelines remain the final word on what counts on this ballot.