There’s a recent web poll being carried by the Wall Street Journal: Which of these items are you most likely to purchase as a gift?

• Flat Panel TV
• iPhone
• Compact Camera
• SLR Camera
• BlackBerry
• Zune
• DS Lite
• GPS Navigator

Interestingly, they did not initially include an iPod–supposedly they assumed that since the iPhone includes that, even though buying an ipod is far easier to do, as they start at far lower prices.

Anyway, very early on, the iPhone showed a very large lead, as reported by MacDailyNews:

• Flat Panel TV – 5% (69 votes)
• iPhone – 51% (647)
• Compact Camera – 5% (69)
• SLR Camera – 6% (78)
• BlackBerry – 10% (131)
• Zune – 8% (101)
• DS Lite – 5% (66)
• GPS Navigator – 10% (126)

That lead held steady when a lot more people had voted:

Now, here’s the interesting part: notice the Zune. Though it got an early head start with 8%, after a few hours, the Zune had fallen to about 0%–just 257 votes out of 123.510. The fact that the very early results were so iPhone-centric are realistic–the numbers came out that way before word could spread to the fanboys.

Well, that didn’t sit well with Zune fanboys. The claim was that when MacDailyNews reported on the missing iPod choice, it sent “thousands of angry iFans voting” at the site. The thing is, that doesn’t really wash. Before MacDailyNews made the report, the iPhone rang in at 51%–exactly the same level as when the Zune fanboys complained of iFans pouring in to “skew” the vote. Flat panel TVs and GPS navigators stayed just as steady as the iPhone, while DS Lite games and compact cameras surged. If there had been a fanboy surge, the iPhone would have pulled out ahead. Instead, it was just that the Zune fell waaaay behind–most likely for the most obvious reasons.

Like I said, the Zune fanboys couldn’t have that–so they called for everyone to spread the word and vote for the Zune. However, that wasn’t good enough: one of them made a script that acted as an auto-voter for Zunes. A Zune fan would simply go to the auto-voter site and leave the page open in their browser, and the page would automatically keep voting for the Zune again and again and again. Then other Zune sites started up with more auto-voters. The result:

Definitely the Zune auto-voters had an impact. It would seem that there was also a response somewhere on the Apple side, as votes for the iPhone/iPod similarly surged. Strangely, while I could find many Zune sites directing fanboys to auto-voters, I could find nothing on the Mac side–no auto-voters, not even anyone urging Mac fanboys to go out and vote. So it should not be too surprising that the Zuners seem to be winning the spam-vote war. Here’s the latest result:

So pretty much, the fanboys have made the poll into a farce. Kinda funny in some ways, kinda sad in others. Not that web polls are worth a rat’s fart anyway.