Prime Minister Narendra Modi has won the online reader’s poll for TIME Person of the Year 2016, beating out other world leaders like US President-elect Donald Trump, incumbent US leader Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Modi won with 18 per cent of the vote when the poll closed last night, getting significantly more votes than his closest contenders, including Obama, Trump and Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange, who all received 7 per cent of the ‘yes’ vote.
Modi was also placed far ahead of other prominent figures of this year, like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (2 per cent) and US Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton (4 per cent), Time said.
Time’s editors will decide the final Person of the Year later this week, but the online poll results provide a look at how the world sees these figures and Modi emerged as the most influential figure in 2016, according to the online poll.
Time said the reader poll is an “important window” into who they think most shaped 2016.
It is for the second time that Modi has won the online readers’ poll for Time Person of the Year title, securing the honour in 2014, when he had got more than 16 per cent of the almost five million votes cast.
