For West Michigans Favorite Bloody Mary: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the West Michigan Favorite Bloody Mary vote is and who runs it

For West Michigans Favorite Bloody Mary is a best-of style audience award for the West Michigan region of Michigan. The organizer is WTRV, a radio station in the Grand Rapids market that broadcasts as 100.5 The River, and the vote is published at rivergrandrapids.com/vote-for-west-michigans-favorite-bloody-mary/, a domain the station operates itself, with no outside balloting service involved.

The format is the classic two-stage local media poll. A nomination round collects candidates from the audience, the station then announces the finalists for the title of West Michigan's Favorite Bloody Mary, and the public vote opens on the announced shortlist. The page text states this sequence plainly: nominations are in, the finalists are announced, and it is time to open up voting.

The vertical is food and drink, aimed at the bars and restaurants of West Michigan, and supporters cast plain free votes, with no paid tier attached to the ballot. Because WTRV hosts everything on its own pages, from the finalist list to the closing announcement, a supporter never has to leave the station's site to take part.

The dated archive: editions, the printed window and what is missing

Five edition years are confirmed for this ballot: 2019, 2022, 2024, 2025 and 2026. The run is not continuous, since no edition is logged between 2019 and 2022, so the year list itself is the full account of how often the station has actually staged the vote. 2026 is the latest year on that list, and 2027 is the next year a cycle could fall in.

The fullest printed dates come from the 2017 cycle. Voting ran from 12 p.m. (noon) on Wednesday, November 1, 2017 until 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday, November 8, 2017, and the winner was announced at 12 p.m. (noon) on Thursday, November 9, 2017. That gives a November window of roughly a week for the vote itself, following the nomination stage.

Several facts sit outside that printed window; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The gaps are the ballot's category list, any per-supporter vote limit, the opening and closing days for the live cycle, and the nomination-round dates for the next edition, since the station schedules each cycle on its own calendar and posts the details when the round is ready.

How a supporter votes in the bloody mary ballot today

The mechanic is deliberately simple because WTRV hosts the whole thing itself. A supporter opens the voting page on rivergrandrapids.com, reads the announced finalists for the title of West Michigan's Favorite Bloody Mary, picks a favorite and sends the form. There is no external balloting platform, no separate login domain and no platform-specific account to create before the vote counts.

Timing matters more than technique. The vote only exists between the opening of the finalist round and the close of the window, which in the printed 2017 cycle meant eight days in November. A vote cast outside an open window has nowhere to land, so the first thing a supporter should check on the live page is whether the current round is accepting submissions.

The station closes the loop publicly. In 2017 the result was announced at noon on the Thursday after voting closed, both on the site and on air at 100.5 The River, which is the pattern a supporter can expect when the next winner is named. Anyone wanting a fuller walkthrough of the sequence, from opening the page to the announcement, can follow the steps laid out in this guide's voting list above.

How this ballot sits beside its Michigan neighbours

West Michigan's bloody mary vote is a single-category food and drink award from a radio station, which makes it a narrower affair than the broad readers-choice surveys elsewhere in the state. Its closest structural cousins on this site are the other Michigan best-of programs: Best of Northern Michigan, Grand Rapids Magazine Best of GR, and the Detroit titles, Detroit Community Choice Awards, Detroit News Readers' Choice and DN Readers Choice Awards.

Three differences stand out. First, the host: this ballot runs on WTRV's own domain, while many Michigan surveys are published by newspapers or magazines. Second, the scope: a single beloved drink, tied to the Grand Rapids area's bar culture, rather than a multi-category sweep across retail, dining and services. Third, the rhythm: the confirmed year list of 2019, 2022, 2024, 2025 and 2026 shows a program that has settled into an annual groove only in recent cycles.

For a supporter, that means the competition here is concentrated. Every finalist on the shortlist is a West Michigan business with a local following, and the winner is decided entirely within the station's audience during a short window, not spread across weeks of category voting.

Strengthening support for a finalist in this ballot

Since the vote is a brief public window run by WTRV itself, the support that moves a finalist comes from mobilizing people who already visit the bar. The ballot's mechanic rewards a business that tells its regulars the exact page address and the closing date, then asks again mid-window. WTRV has not published any rule on automated submissions or bulk voting, so anything beyond direct asks should wait until the station's terms are read. For a broader view of what works in public polls of this shape, see how to get more votes online, and for award-style ballots specifically, buy award votes explains the general landscape without promising any outcome.