What Are the Naruto Popularity Polls and Who Won Them?

The in-run polls followed the standard Jump ritual: ballots in the magazine, results announced with a Kishimoto color illustration ranking the top characters. Kakashi Hatake won the early polls and stayed at or near the top throughout, a remarkable record for a supporting character; Naruto, Sasuke, Iruka, Gaara, Deidara and others rotated through the upper ranks as arcs rose and fell. Databooks and fanbooks reprinted the results, which is where most collectors meet them now.

The polls were more than decoration. Jump's editors read them as market research, cover and merchandise decisions followed the rankings, and Kishimoto's comments in the results spreads show him reacting to surprises with the same candor as his author notes. A character's poll history is often the fastest explanation for why some figures got three figure lines and others got none.

The capstone came after the manga ended. For the series' anime 20th anniversary, Shueisha ran Narutop99, the first worldwide character poll, in late 2022 into 2023, drawing millions of votes across regions. Minato Namikaze won, ahead of Itachi and Sakura, and the prize was exactly the one fans had dreamed of: Kishimoto drew a special one-shot manga about the winner, published in Jump in July 2023.

For collectors, poll material is ephemera with a paper trail: the results spreads live in specific Jump issues, the databook reprints document them in collected form, and Narutop99's one-shot is a modern magazine artifact that pairs with the 2023 Jump issue that carried it. The Library treats the polls as reception history, the readers' own record of the run.