The first global popularity poll for anime and One Piece the leading characters are:
1-Monkey D. Luffy
2-Roronoa Zoro
3-Nami
4-Sanji
5-Trafalgar Law
6-Nico Robin
The full results themselves showed great regional diversity. X Drake, a character considered to be of Turkish design, ranked 41st overall, but 2ndin Turkey. Morgans came in 80th worldwide, but 38th in North America.
Furthermore, the final results also show significant differences compared to the provisional results. Most notably, Nami rose from 7th to 3rd, while the character Carrot climbed from 17th to 8th place. One Piece commentator/critic Greg Wernerstated, "Carrot is a much-loved character, and the dedication of the furry fandom may have played a large role in this result."
The series creator, Eiichiro Oda, will then create a new illustration featuring the 50 characters who are leading the poll. He also left the following message for fans:
Normally, this character ranking poll is only done in Japan, but by opening it up to the world via the internet, I was able to see in real time which characters are popular in different regions of the world, and some characters have risen in the rankings since the mid-semester results, so it was really fun.
I heard there seemed to be some online fan-organized movements to get together and vote for unexpected characters. That didn't go through the production team (laughs). It's amazing how different preferences for these characters are all over the world.
As promised, I will be creating an illustration featuring the characters who ranked in the top 50 (and a few others), so please stay tuned. Thank you so much to all ONE PIECE fans worldwide for participating in the voting!
The voting therefore took place between January 3rd and February 28th, and accumulated a total of 12 million votes.
Source: ANN