Assange surpasses Trump in Time's poll for 2016 Person of the Year

The magazine selects the person who has, for better or for worse, impacted news the most in a given year

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has topped the online poll of who readers think should be Time’s Person of the Year 2016, leaving behind United States president-elect Donald Trump with just 1%.

Assange and Trump were deadlocked with 9% on Monday morning of all the “yes” votes cast by participants, but Assange pulled ahead to 10% shortly after noon, according to Time.

Who should be TIME's Person of the Year for 2016? https://t.co/TVNJtiqxsa

— TIME (@TIME) November 22, 2016

Assange’s organisation, Wikileaks, made headlines regularly during recent months by releasing a steady trickle of information throughout the US presidential election 2016, including leaked internal Democratic National Committee correspondence and messages from the account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta.

TIME Person of the Year results so far: Trump 11% Assange 11% Putin 7% Modi 5% Erdoğan 3% Sanders 2% Clinton 1% https://t.co/tZLbQjd0QO pic.twitter.com/HjaWvibvmk

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 22, 2016

A United Nations panel had, earlier in the year, found that Assange had been “arbitrarily detained” in London, where he remains in the Ecuadorian embassy in fear of being extradited to Sweden.

Each year, Time selects the person who has, for better or for worse, impacted the news the most in the continuing year. The magazine’s editors always make the final Person of the Year selection, but this poll is a way for readers to voice their opinions on who has made the greatest impact in 2016.

For 2016, Time — in partnership with Opentopic and IBM’s Watson—is also able to track and compare influence in a whole new way. Opentopic worked with Watson to track how candidates made their mark on the internet. The magazine's editors used this information while finalising the list for the Person of the Year reader poll.