Do AP Voters Favor Teams From Their Own Region?

Barely. Voters from a conference's states rank that conference's teams about a quarter of a spot higher than other voters do. That's about one spot for every four teams. We also track which voters sit furthest from the poll. Far from the poll doesn't mean wrong, only different from the group.

AP poll · Updated Nov. 13, 2026Includes AP polls through Sun., Nov. 8, 2026

Voters barely favor their own region

Every week, 70 sportswriters and broadcasters each send the AP their own Top 25, and the poll is their combined vote. The voters come from all over the country, so a fair question is whether they lift the teams near them.

We compared each voter's rank for a team with the average rank every other voter gave that team in the same poll. Then we checked whether voters based in a conference's states ranked its teams higher than voters from everywhere else did.

They do, barely. In the polls through Nov. 8, it's about a quarter of a spot, or one spot for every four teams. Voters in Big Ten states lifted Big Ten teams 0.27 spots, and voters in SEC states lifted SEC teams 0.25. Voters in ACC states were at 0.18, and voters in Big 12 states showed no lean.

Only the Big Ten's lean is too big to be chance once you account for checking four conferences at once.

Teams from a voter's own state get about a fifth of a spot this year, and that isn't clearly different from zero. In the final polls from 2014 to 2023, it was about half a spot.

Single rankings can look bigger. Pat Welter of WRAL Raleigh had Duke #16 on Sept. 20, when the poll had Duke unranked. Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury News had USC #13 on Oct. 4, when the poll had USC #19. On Oct. 18, Wilner left USC off entirely while the poll had it #16. That's why the averages matter more than single examples.

One limit: this compares voters with each other. If the whole panel leaned the same way, this test couldn't see it.

Stephen Means has been furthest from the poll this season

To see who sits furthest from the group, we measure how far each voter's ranking sat from the poll in spots per team. 0 would be the poll exactly, and 2 means the voter had the poll's teams 2 spots off on average.

Across all 11 polls, from the preseason poll on Aug. 13 to Nov. 8, Stephen Means has been 3.3 spots per team from the poll on average. The next furthest are Dylan Sinn of Fort Wayne Journal Gazette and Koki Riley of The Advocate (Baton Rouge), at 3.1 each.

Julian Mininsohn of WKRN Nashville has been the closest, 0.85 spots per team on average. The average voter has been 1.8.

Voters sat closest to the poll on Nov. 1

The average voter was 1.5 spots per team from the Nov. 1 poll, the lowest of the season. Voters were furthest apart on Oct. 4, when the average was 2.0.

The furthest anyone has been from one poll was Stephen Means on Oct. 25, 4.5 spots per team. That ranking left #16 Tennessee out.

The closest anyone has been to one poll was 0.4 spots per team. Michael Katz of NE Mississippi Daily Journal did it on Sept. 20, and Eric Johnson of WSLS Roanoke did it on Nov. 1.

Five weeks before that, on Sept. 27, Eric Johnson left Miami out of the Top 25. Miami was 4-0 and #4 in that poll.

Every voter's average, preseason to Nov. 8

Spots per team from the poll, averaged over all 11 polls, for the 67 voters who sent a ranking every week. Furthest first.

For this week's rankings, voter by voter, see our AP poll voters page.

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