Cleveland Magazine Best of Cleveland Readers' Poll: How Voting Works & How to Win

Two Cleveland publications, two different "Best of Cleveland" ballots

Two Cleveland publications run a poll called "Best of Cleveland." They are not the same program, and mixing them up is the fastest way to campaign for the wrong ballot.

Cleveland Scene runs a two-stage, nomination-then-finalist vote across 250-plus categories, with results landing in its December issue. Cleveland Magazine runs something structurally different: a readers' vote that sits alongside its own editorial Best of Cleveland list rather than replacing it, and instead of one shared ballot, splits into two regional votes, Best of the East and Best of the West.

The results row is the one worth pausing on. Cleveland Scene's timeline is public and printed; Cleveland Magazine's, as far as anyone has found, isn't. Treat clevelandmagazine.com itself, not a prior year's calendar, as the only live authority on when either regional ballot opens or closes. For the other program's own mechanics, see the Cleveland Scene Best of Cleveland guide.

Why Best of the East and Best of the West run as separate votes

Split the ballot in two, and a citywide "who's the best" question turns into two smaller, more answerable ones. That's the practical effect of Best of the East and Best of the West running separately rather than as one combined list.

What separate ballots change about who actually competes

A restaurant tallied under Best of the East never faces a nominee from the West side ballot. That's a real structural difference from a program like Cleveland Scene's, where a Lakewood bar and a downtown steakhouse can land in the same category regardless of which side of the city they sit on. Here, geography does the sorting before the category even does.

Nothing in the public record checked here spells out precisely which neighborhoods belong to which side. A business sitting close to the dividing line, downtown among them, should confirm its own assigned ballot directly with Cleveland Magazine rather than assume from a map alone.

What's confirmed about this program, and what genuinely isn't

Three facts hold up. Cleveland Magazine runs this as a readers' companion to its own editorial Best of Cleveland list. That readers' vote splits into Best of the East and Best of the West. And the site of record is clevelandmagazine.com. Past those three, nothing further has been made public.

No vote totals. No confirmed close date. No published category list. No named recent winners. A guide that invented any of those to sound more complete would do a disservice to a business trying to plan around this program honestly.

Why the gap matters more here than it would elsewhere

Cleveland Scene's Best of Cleveland has a public 250-plus category count and a December results issue on record. Cleveland Magazine's readers' poll doesn't have an equivalent public specification, at least not one turned up here. That's not necessarily unusual for a magazine-run companion vote, but it does mean a business shouldn't borrow Cleveland Scene's calendar or category shape and assume it applies to this separately run program.

How the companion-to-editorial format actually works

Picture two Cleveland Magazine features running side by side each year. One is the editorial Best of Cleveland list, the magazine's own staff picks. The other is this readers' poll, open to the public and split into Best of the East and Best of the West. They share a name and a publication, not a selection method.

That distinction is easy to lose in casual conversation. "We're in Best of Cleveland" could describe an editorial mention a business had no say in, or a readers' vote result a customer base actually helped produce. A business citing this program should say "readers' poll" or name the East or West ballot outright, rather than reach for the shorter, more ambiguous phrase.

The mechanics of running any readers' choice campaign responsibly, gathering real supporters, pointing them at the correct page, pacing outreach, are covered in general terms at award-style vote campaigns. A Food & Beverage nominee on either the East or West ballot may also find the restaurant vote campaign guide useful for that category specifically.

Campaigning across the East/West divide without overreaching

Greater Cleveland's East Side and West Side identity predates this poll by decades, and it shows up in how people talk about the city long before anyone mentions a magazine ballot. A Cleveland Heights or Shaker Heights supporter and a Lakewood or Ohio City supporter are, in this program, voting on entirely separate lists, not competing for the same slot.

University Circle, Collinwood, and Beachwood sit on the East side ballot's likely turf; Tremont, Rocky River, and Westlake fall on the West side's. A business should confirm its own placement directly rather than assume from neighborhood alone, since nobody has published the exact boundary line.

A vote-promotion service can help a business reach the supporters it already has, on whichever side of the ballot it actually sits. It cannot manufacture a category, confirm an unpublished close date, or move a business from one regional vote into the other. See how online contest votes work for the general mechanics, and read is buying votes legal before committing budget to any Cleveland readers' poll.

For the rest of Ohio's confirmed contest landscape, the Ohio contest hub lists the state's other readers' choice and fan-vote programs, including the Akron-Area High School Athlete of the Week, the Cincinnati Enquirer Athlete of the Week, the Akron Community's Choice Awards, and Cincinnati CommunityVotes.