Best of the Best 2026: How Voting Works & How to Win

What Best of the Best 2026 is and who runs it

Best of the Best 2026 is the readers' choice franchise of the Victoria Advocate, the daily newspaper of Victoria, Texas. Rather than judging entries, the program asks the public to name local favorites, and the publisher presents the results as a community guide. The 2026 edition is the ballot this page documents.

Second Street, the balloting platform many newspapers use for their readers' polls, carries the vote. The Victoria Advocate's account sits at vicad.secondstreetapp.com, and the 2026 ballot lives at https://vicad.secondstreetapp.com/Best-of-the-Best-2026. The promotion is registered there as a Ballot/NominationAndVotingBallot, which means nomination and voting run through the same ballot rather than as two separate phases on separate pages.

The publisher also uses the same Second Street account for sweepstakes and giveaways, including a quarterly cash sweepstakes series and local event promotions. Those are distinct promotions with their own rules and dates, and none of them is part of this readers' poll. A reader landing on the account's other pages should check the address before assuming a sweepstakes entry has anything to do with Best of the Best.

The dated record: which editions ran and when

Three editions of this program are confirmed: 2020, 2025 and 2026. The 2020 edition is documented by a promotions gallery on the publisher's Second Street account titled Best of the Best 2020, and the 2025 and 2026 editions each have their own year-stamped ballot address. The 2025 ballot sits at vicad.secondstreetapp.com/Best-of-the-Best-2025, one path segment away from the 2026 ballot.

The 2026 window is the page's anchor fact. The ballot opened on January 12, 2026 and closed on March 9, 2026, a span of roughly two months in the first quarter of the year. The promotion's status on the Second Street registration is closed, so the 2026 edition no longer accepts votes of any kind. The 2025 edition's own dates are not printed on the current ballot; only its address is confirmed.

What the publisher has not printed anywhere public is the category roster for the 2026 ballot, nor any ceiling on the number of votes one supporter may contribute or who is eligible; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. No 2027 edition has been announced by the Victoria Advocate either. The pattern of 2020, 2025 and 2026 suggests the program is recurring, but a suggestion is not a schedule, and the publisher posts each new ballot under its own address when it chooses to.

How a supporter votes on this ballot

Voting happens through a Second Street ballot open to the public. A supporter opens the ballot address during a live window, moves through the categories the publisher has arranged, and submits picks through the form. Because the promotion is typed as a Ballot/NominationAndVotingBallot, the nomination step and the voting step share one flow: a supporter nominates or selects a favorite within the same ballot where votes are counted, rather than visiting a separate nomination page first.

Two practical points follow from the ballot being closed. First, the 2026 address currently presents a finished edition, so a supporter arriving today cannot cast anything; the form's live behavior can only be observed when the Victoria Advocate opens its next cycle. Second, the rules that shape a supporter's behavior, such as whether a login is required, whether repeat visits on later days are counted, and how the form confirms a submission, are set per promotion on Second Street and are not printed anywhere for this ballot while it sits closed.

The address itself is what a supporter can count on. Each edition lives at its own year-stamped URL on the publisher's account, so the 2026 ballot and any future ballot are separate pages. Typing the publisher's Second Street address and following its own link to the current year is the reliable route, and the form's prompts during a live window are the final authority on how often a pick can be cast.

How this ballot sits beside its Texas neighbours

Victoria's Best of the Best belongs to a crowded Texas best-of field, yet it answers to a different organizer from every metro poll in the state. The larger readers' polls each run under their own publisher: the Best of Austin Readers Poll, the Best of Dallas Readers' Choice, Best of El Paso, Best of Houston, Best of San Antonio and Best of Fort Worth. A vote cast in Victoria's ballot counts only in Victoria's ballot.

The difference is scale and sponsorship. The metro polls cover large cities and their suburbs, while the Victoria Advocate's ballot serves a single newspaper market in the Coastal Bend region, where the nominees are the businesses and places readers encounter daily. That local focus is the program's appeal: a win is a claim on community favor printed by the town's own daily paper.

For a business owner, the takeaway is that advice written for a different Texas poll does not transfer automatically. Every organizer sets its own categories, dates and terms, and the Victoria Advocate's ballot is governed by what its own pages print. A nominee competing in Victoria should read this ballot's live form first, and treat any other program's rules as background rather than instruction.

Strengthening support in this readers' poll

Support in Best of the Best is built while the window is open, and the 2026 window has closed, so any push now is preparation for the next cycle. The ballot's mechanic rewards a business that tells its customers exactly where to click: the year-stamped Second Street address, the category the business appears in, and the window's dates. Because the Victoria Advocate has printed no rule on repeat visits away from the ballot, the live form is what decides the number of votes one supporter may contribute, and a campaign that follows the form's own prompts stays inside the program's terms.

The organizer's control over outside help is the same as any publisher's: it runs the ballot and can delete votes or disqualify a nominee it considers irregular. That makes honest outreach, signs, receipts, email lists and social posts pointing at the ballot, the durable play. To see what tends to work across readers' polls of this shape, read how to get more votes online, and for the legal framing see is buying votes legal.