polling

Pluralpollings

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of collecting people's opinions by asking a set of questions.

   Frequent polling helped the network predict how the debate would land.

   Polling before the launch revealed which features customers cared about most.

   Similarsurveying, canvassing

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The process of casting votes in an election.

   Polling closed at eight, and the count began an hour later.

   Officials extended polling after long lines formed at several stations.

   Similarvoting

   Note

   In election language the word names the window as much as the act. Polling opens, closes or is extended, and it lends its name to the polling station and polling day. Unlike the opinion survey, this sense takes no plural. One speaks of heavy or light polling, never of pollings.

3. 3
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A technique in which a system repeatedly checks a peripheral or service to see whether it has data ready to transfer.

   The driver relies on polling to detect when the printer is ready.

   Polling keeps the processor busy even when no new input arrives.

   Note

   Asking instead of waiting is the whole idea. The processor checks a device's status at regular intervals, whether or not anything has changed. Its usual alternative is the interrupt-driven scheme, where the device signals only when it needs service. Polling is simpler to build, but it spends effort on empty checks. That cost is why engineers weigh how often a polling loop should run.

4. 4
   verb

   Present participle of poll.

   Researchers are polling residents about the proposed highway.

   The station kept polling listeners throughout the broadcast.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every meaning of poll, not only the electoral ones. Researchers polling residents and citizens polling at an election both use it. So does the cutting sense: polling a creature's hair, or cropping something by shearing. As a gerund it shades into the nouns spelled the same way, the opinion survey and the voting itself.

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