Best of the Lehigh Valley (Lehigh Valley Style): How Voting Works & How to Win

Two Pennsylvania magazine polls, built almost oppositely

Best of the Lehigh Valley and Pittsburgh's Best of the 'Burgh are both magazine-run readers-choice polls in the same state, and that is close to where the similarity ends. One runs over 100 narrow categories with no published vote cap. The other runs roughly 8 broad groups with an hourly limit per category.

A business that has run one of these polls before should not assume the other works the same way. Category granularity, timing, and the gap between voting and results all point in different directions. See the Best of the 'Burgh guide for how the Pittsburgh version handles its own mechanics.

What over 100 categories in four groups actually means for a campaign

Food & Drink. Health & Self. Shopping & Services. Fun & Games. Those four groups hold the full category list, and within each one a business has to find its specific slot among dozens of others rather than compete inside one broad "best restaurant" or "best shop" bucket.

Narrow categories reward precision, not size

A well-defined niche category, a specific type of bakery rather than "best restaurant" generally, gives a smaller business a realistic shot against far larger competitors. Landing in the wrong group, or the wrong category within a group, quietly removes that advantage.

Businesses weighing a Food & Drink entry specifically can also check the restaurant vote campaign guide for category-specific pacing advice that applies to a narrow-category ballot like this one.

A four-week window that closes months before results appear

January 12 to February 8. Four weeks, and early in the year, unlike many readers-choice polls that run through spring or summer. Then a long quiet stretch: no published results until the July print edition, roughly five months after the ballot closes.

The general mechanics of pacing a readers-choice push are covered on how online contest votes work, and the broader award vote campaign guide covers how other multi-month results timelines typically play out.

Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton don't share one customer base

The Lehigh Valley's three anchor cities sit close together geographically but run distinct local identities. Allentown is the largest and most urban of the three. Bethlehem carries a strong arts-and-culture identity built around its historic Moravian core and SteelStacks district. Easton anchors the valley's eastern edge along the Delaware River, with its own downtown and market culture.

Whitehall, Emmaus, Nazareth, Coopersburg, and Bethlehem Township fill out the surrounding suburban and small-town business base. None of these are official Best of the Lehigh Valley divisions; the ballot groups by category, not by town, so a business in any of them competes on the same category page as one in the three anchor cities.

Keeping claims honest across a five-month results gap

The long stretch between the February 8 vote close and the July results is the single easiest place for a campaign to overstate itself by accident. "Nominated" or "on the 2026 ballot" holds up the whole time. "Best of the Lehigh Valley 2026, [category]" only becomes accurate once the July edition actually names it.

Real customer outreach, sent to the correct category link during the four-week window, is the entire legitimate approach; automated voting or fake accounts risk disqualification and carry real reputational cost in a regional business community this connected. Is buying votes legal covers where paid reach ends and that risk begins.

The Lehigh Valley's sport-side fan votes run on entirely separate rules from this business poll; see the Pennsylvania High School Athlete of the Week guide, the Mr. PA Football guide, and the PennLive Mid-Penn Boys Basketball Player of the Week guide for how those differ. A business running both a Lehigh Valley category and a broader statewide push should treat each as its own campaign with its own timeline; the Pennsylvania contest hub lists every program covered across the state.