Not quite, unfortunately. The problem with voting, as the reddits realized from the very beginning, is that people will vote something up not just because they liked it, but because they want other people to read it. And a site full of what the majority want everyone else to read could be significantly less interesting than one full of what people like themselves.
And with polls there's not even a pretense that they reflect anyone's interest. The voting mechanism is being hacked for another use.
Only if the Bible is basically the same as porn.
Why people vote the way they do is an interesting topic, but it won't really affect how the reddits of the world deal with it. A vote is a vote.
Imagine yourself inside the head of, say, an abortion rights advocate. A story appears with a headline saying that abortion is just as common where it's illegal. You don't read it; you already know that; but you upvote it as a way of saying "hear hear." Now apply the same rule to articles about Bush, Ron Paul, the RIAA, police abuses, etc, and you've filled up most of the frontpage of a site.
What I mean is, the data they have the opportunity to collect and use to benefit the individual would make users infinitly more loyal, and reduce the chance of them being overly liberal in their voting habits. The reason being is that they'd CARE. My argument then if I had one to begin with is that users don't care about the system because there's nothing invested in it for them. Yes..Yes..the community..I know, but whats in it for them to make them care.
anyone ever used pandora.com?
you give it an artist, it plays you a song by the artist or in the same genre, you vote the song up or down, eventually pandora learns enough about your tastes to only play songs that you enjoy
what if a social news site kept track of what kind of stories you voted up or down, did some magic to draw connections between types of stories, so the front page of the site would look different for each user... people that don't like poll stories wouldn't have poll stories on the front page, etc, etc