BBC did indeed release its list of Top  based on  respondents   BBCs numerical rankings of the  apparently werent disclosed until after the poll was rather heavily flogged in a series of broadcasts in which each of the Top  were advocated by various celebritiesauthoritiescommentators and during which time a vastly larger number of voters called in   I seem to remember the final number on order of  Whether or how this affected final rankings is apparently unknown Obviously these people were if nothing else in some degree TV fans  The Wikipedia article seems to fully accept the validity of the BBC poll which was not at all focused on Scott Further the article implies to me that the poll revealed a decline over time in Scotts popularity with the British Public   Seems like a reasonable thesis but without comparable polling data from previous periods this is not more than interesting speculation on the part of whatever author is cited  For deep background Wikipedia itself has a number of nonfeatured articles that are somewhat relevant with regard to the rather complex topic of polling including sampling error margin of error  tracking poll straw poll and various other topics  Im certainly uninformed