Now For Your Favorite Local Ice Cream Shop: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the WPST ice cream poll is and who runs it

Now For Your Favorite Local Ice Cream Shop is a public-vote poll run by WPST, a contemporary-hits radio station based in Princeton, New Jersey. WPST is a Townsquare Media station broadcasting as WPST-FM, and the poll lives at https://wpst.com/vote-now-for-your-favorite-local-ice-cream-shop/, a page the station publishes itself, so no third-party balloting platform sits between the supporter and the vote. The page carries the headline SOUND OFF: Who Serves the Best Ice Cream In Our Area?, and the question underneath it is deliberately simple: which local ice cream shop is your favorite?

The poll began as a conversation, not a formal awards program. WPST told its audience that their responses were incredible, read the comments, made a list of the suggested shops, and then asked readers to sound off by voting right on the page. That origin shapes the whole format: a single question, a listener-built list of options, and a short voting window rather than a multi-round bracket.

The vertical is food, in the best-of style common to radio and publisher polls. Site navigation around the ballot groups it with Bucks County, Burlington County and Mercer County coverage and with the Chris & the Crew morning show, which places the audience across the Princeton area and into nearby Pennsylvania communities within the station's reach.

The dated record for this poll

The confirmed run years for this ballot are 2019, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. That footprint shows a feature that skipped some seasons and then settled into a regular spring slot, rather than an unbroken yearly streak. The most recent confirmed run is 2026, and a 2027 edition would fit the pattern the last several years have set.

The one hard date the station prints is the close. WPST states that it will close the poll around May 3 and share the results shortly after, and the voting phase sits in May, framed by the station's excitement for spring and summer. The exact opening date is not printed alongside it, and neither is any nomination round before voting; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Two other gaps follow from the same sparse published details. The station has not printed a per-supporter voting limit, an eligibility rule for voters, or a description of what the winning shop receives beyond the title itself. Because wpst.com hosts the ballot directly, those details live only on the poll page when a run is active, and no standalone rules document accompanies the feature.

For a supporter planning a push, the practical reading is this: the window is short, the close is anchored to early May, and the results follow quickly. Anything a shop wants to do to mobilize customers has to happen inside that compressed stretch, which is why the days right before the around-May-3 close carry the most weight in a poll of this shape.

How a supporter votes in the poll today

The mechanic is the simplest one in public voting. To vote, a supporter loads the ballot at wpst.com, finds the poll under the SOUND OFF headline, and picks a favorite shop from the list WPST assembled from listener comments. The station's own phrasing is to sound off by voting right here, and the poll module sits directly on the article page.

The ballot describes no login, registration or email step. That lowers the barrier for a casual supporter, which cuts both ways for a shop: every customer can act on a prompt immediately, but nobody has a persistent account tying them to the poll for repeat visits. Whether the module accepts repeat votes from the same person, and on what schedule, is not stated on the page.

The shop list itself comes from the audience. WPST read the comments its spring question drew, compiled the suggestions into a list, and put that list up as the options. A shop that was suggested often enough appears on the ballot; the station has not published criteria for how the list was trimmed or whether write-ins are accepted.

After voting, the loop closes fast. The poll closes around May 3, and the station shares the results shortly after, so there is no long wait between the final vote and the announcement. Supporters who want their pick to win should treat the ballot as a short sprint with a public finish line, not a season-long campaign.

How this poll sits beside its New Jersey neighbours

New Jersey has a crowded field of public-vote programs, and this poll is the smallest and most conversational of them. The state's larger readers' choice contests, such as the Asbury Park Press Readers' Choice and the Best of Bergen Community's Choice Awards, run many categories at once through newspaper and magazine brands. The WPST poll asks a single question about a single treat.

The closest structural cousins are the food-focused ones. The Jersey Bites Monmouth County Readers' Choice also centers eating and drinking, though it covers Monmouth County through a dedicated food publisher, while WPST's ballot is anchored to the Princeton area and the station's radio audience. The Best of Jersey Shore Contest and the Best of New Jersey program cover wider ground with broader category slates.

Within its own publisher, the poll has one direct sibling: the 94.5 PST Pet Costume Contest, run by the same station. Both are WPST features built on the same pattern, a lighthearted single-topic question put to the listener base on the station's own site, promoted through the morning show rather than through a formal entry process.

What makes the ice cream poll different is its origin in comments and its single-question format. There is no nomination round, no tiered structure and no business-facing entry form, just a list the station built from listener suggestions and a poll that closes around May 3.

Strengthening support for a shop in this poll

A shop backing itself in this poll has three natural assets: its own customers, the ballot's simplicity, and the station's invitation. Because the poll asks one question with no login, a counter sign, a register receipt note or a social post pointing to the wpst.com ballot can convert a customer into a vote inside a minute. The short window before the around-May-3 close means those prompts should start early and repeat often.

The station's own framing helps. WPST asked for suggestions in comments and built the list from them, so a shop that engages with the station's posts, and encourages its fans to comment and vote, is working with the format rather than around it. The station has not published any rule about outside help or organized voting pushes for this poll, so the safe assumption is that genuine customer mobilization is what the format rewards.

Broader tactics that suit small local ballots, from timing asks to structuring a supporter push, are laid out in our votes guide. The principles there matter more than usual here, because a poll this short gives a shop very little room to recover from a slow start.