In 2013, after years of eligibility, but no prior nominations, Rush was finally nominated for and inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Fans had been clamoring for their inclusion in the institution for decades, and it was fitting that the band earned the honor the same year the Rock Hall implemented the “fan vote.” Rush carried that inaugural poll by an impressive margin, winning nearly 25 percent of the vote, well ahead of runners up Deep Purple (about 16 percent) and Heart (about 12 percent).
Rush’s dominance in the fan vote, however, was more correlation to their Rock Hall induction than causation. Over the years, the winner of the fan vote has frequently earned a spot in the Hall, but not always, including this year. New Edition, the trailblazing Boston R&B and pop group behind hits like “Candy Girl,” “Cool It Now,” and “Can You Stand the Rain,” dominated the fan ballot this year, earning more than one million votes, but failed to make the final cut.
The reason is simple: The online fan vote only counts as one ballot. New Edition can run away with the fan vote, but that’s cumulatively equivalent to each individual ballot submitted by more than 1,200 people in the Rock Hall voting body. (This is the second year in a row that the winner of the fan vote hasn’t been inducted, following Phish in 2025, and just the third time ever.)
In an interview with Billboard last year, John Sykes, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation’s chairman, discussed the fan vote’s role in the nomination and induction process. He said the tallies are always shared with the nominating committee, but he said there was a reason it wasn’t given more weight than any other ballot.
“It’s a great way to have the public weigh in, however, you may have a [worthy] artist who doesn’t have a strong fan club or active group of supporters and we don’t want the fan club being able to lobby their artist into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame,” he said.
This isn’t to say the fan vote doesn’t serve as some kind of barometer. Past winners have often been artists that have that aura of being long overdue (even if it’s still their first nomination). There is, of course, Rush, as well as Kiss in 2014, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble in 2015, and Tina Turner in 2021.
But the fan vote also isn’t exactly indicative of a “snub.” Nor is it something that, in the age of mass digital manipulations, prospective inductees need to wring their hands over. Last week, for instance, Wu-Tang Clan’s Method Man threw out unfounded allegations of bots contaminating the fan vote, writing, “It’s not fair to the nominees or the legit voters… with that being said congrats to all the nominees and good luck!”
Method Man wound up deleting the post and Wu-Tang Clan finished eighth in the fan vote. They’ll also enter the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame later this year.
While New Edition fans may be disappointed in this year’s results, their victory in the fan vote suggests there’s good reason to think the band will eventually get their Rock Hall due. In 2020, the Dave Matthews Band won the fan vote with more than a million votes, while Pat Benatar came in second with about 882,000. Two years later, Benatar was inducted into the Hall on her second nomination, while the Dave Matthews Band secured entry in 2024.
