The StarNews Student of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the StarNews Student of the Week is and who runs it

The StarNews Student of the Week is a recurring recognition series from the StarNews, the Gannett-owned newspaper serving southeastern North Carolina. Each round asks readers to pick a standout high school student, and the nominees come from schools in three counties: New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender. The series belongs to the best-of family of programs, the same family as a readers' choice contest, but the entrants are students rather than businesses.

Crowdsignal, the polling service behind the poll.fm domain, carries the ballot for this Gannett title. The current ballot lives at poll.fm/16683957. Each weekly round is a fresh poll on that platform, which is why the series shows up as dozens of short ballots across a season rather than one long vote. Each round works as a plain public vote: the ballot lists the week's nominees, supporters select one, and the largest share wins the weekly title.

Because the nominees are minors, this page describes the program by publisher, counties and season rather than naming individual students. The table below sets out the series' fixed details.

The dated record for the StarNews student poll

Three seasons of the series are confirmed: 2024, 2025 and 2026. The evidence for those seasons comes from dozens of weekly ballots, 32 in total, that the series has published on Crowdsignal across the three years. That volume is what marks the program as a genuine weekly series rather than a one-off poll: a season is a run of short rounds, each carrying a fresh nominee list and a closing moment of its own.

The active windows fall in spring. The series pairs a nomination phase with the public vote, and confirmed activity has run from April into May. One round was announced under the banner of an April 29 to May 3 voting week, which gives a sense of the rhythm: a week-long window, then a new poll opens with that week's nominees.

One closed round shows how the numbers look at this scale. The poll titled as round (3/2) closed with two nominees splitting 13 total votes, 46 percent against 54 percent, a margin of a single vote. That result is worth reading closely, because it shows that in this series a small organized push of supporters can genuinely decide a round.

Missing from the ballot page are the precise opening and closing dates of the next round, the full nominee roster ahead of the nomination phase, and any restriction on casting extra votes within a single round; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

How a supporter votes in the current StarNews round

Voting in the StarNews Student of the Week is deliberately simple, because the organizer wants families and classmates to participate without friction. The supporter opens the week's ballot on Crowdsignal, reads the short nominee list, marks the circle beside the student they are backing, and submits the choice. Crowdsignal then displays the running percentage split, so a supporter can see exactly where the round stands.

Three practical points follow from that format. First, the ballot does not present a registration step, so no account is needed to take part in a round as far as the poll page shows. Second, there is no write-in field: only the nominees the StarNews has listed for that week can collect votes, which is why the nomination phase matters as much as the vote itself. Third, each weekly round runs on its own poll address, so a link that worked last week may point to a closed poll this week.

The closed (3/2) round is the clearest illustration of the mechanic in action: two nominees, a public percentage tally, and a final count of 13 votes. A supporter returning for the next round should expect the same shape, a short list and a fast close, and should check the live ballot rather than assume the previous week's timing carries over.

Where this poll sits among North Carolina's public votes

The StarNews Student of the Week is unusual among North Carolina public votes because its entrants are students rather than businesses or venues. Most of its neighbours in the state are readers' choice contests run by other publishers, each answering to its own organization. Best of North Carolina is the statewide best-of program, while Charlotte Magazine Best of the Best Awards serves the Charlotte market under a different masthead entirely.

Two siblings are closer in shape to the StarNews series because they are also publisher-run local polls. Daily Reflector Best Of Pitt County is a newspaper contest for the Greenville area, and Fayetteville Community's Choice Awards does the same for Fayetteville. Both, like the StarNews series, lean on a local readership to drive participation week after week.

The remaining siblings cover smaller geographies: Best of Chowan County and Best of Haywood are county-scoped programs. What separates the StarNews poll from every one of them is its subject: a weekly student title decided by a handful of votes, tied to three specific counties in the state's southeastern corner, run by a Gannett newsroom rather than a chamber or an events company.

Strengthening support for a nominee in this weekly poll

The closed (3/2) round is the best guide to what it takes here: 13 total votes decided the weekly title, with a one-vote margin between 46 and 54 percent. In a series with margins that thin, the difference is almost always outreach, not luck. The effective moves are the ones school communities already know: share the poll address the day the round opens, ask classmates and family groups directly, and remind people before the window closes rather than after.

Timing matters because each round is short. A nominee whose supporters wait for the weekend has lost days the other side used. The StarNews has printed no policy on outside help or organized voting for this series, so the only written rule a supporter can point to is whatever the live ballot itself displays in a given week.

For a fuller playbook that fits a small weekly ballot like this one, read how to get more votes online, and for the broader question of paid support in public polls, see buying award votes. Both pages treat the organizer's terms as the deciding factor, which is the right posture for a publisher-run student poll.