Conducting polls in webinars


The polling feature allows you to create polling questions for your webinars. You will be able to launch the poll during your webinar and gather the responses from your participants. You also have the ability to download a report of polling after the webinar. Polls can also be conducted anonymously, if you do not wish to collect participant information with the poll results.

Hosts and co-hosts can launch polls, but only the host (or alternative host, if enabled) is able to create new polls. Hosts and co-hosts are also not able to vote in polls themselves. When launching the poll, they can choose whether or not panelists are able to participate.

Full details of the poll results, such as each participant's answers and submission times, are contained in the polling reports, which are available after the webinar by default, but can also be made available during the live session. 

You can also create and launch quizzes, which allow you to set correct answers.  

Creating polls or quizzes in meetings is also possible. 

This article covers:

Prerequisites for conducting polling in webinars

*Note: Users on the iOS or Android mobile app can participate in polling, but hosts need to be using the desktop client to manage polling.

Limitations of webinar polls

How to create a poll for a webinar

You can create polling questions in advance of the webinar or during a live session. If you create or edit a poll during a live webinar on version 5.12.9 and lower, you will be directed to the web portal. Hosts on desktop client 5.13.0 or higher will be able to create and edit in the polling window in the webinar. 

During the webinar, all questions under a single poll will be asked when launched. You can create additional polls to ask questions at a different time during the webinar.

Create a poll before a webinar

  1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal.
  2. In the navigation menu, click Webinars.
  3. Click the name of the webinar you want to add a poll to or click the Schedule a Webinar button to schedule a new webinar.
  4. If you are editing an existing webinar, scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Polls/Quizzes tab. If you are scheduling a new webinar, click Save, then scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Polls/Quizzes tab. 
  5. Click + Create. 
  6. Click the title Untitled Poll... to give the poll a name.
  7. Review the question types and configuration options, then select the question type for the first question.
  8. (Optional) Click + Add Question to add another question to the poll. 
  9. (Optional) Click gear icon at the top right to configure the following options:
    • Require answers to be anonymous
  10. (Optional) Click the preview icon to see a preview.
  11. (Optional) Click the ellipses icon at the top right to Save as draft.
  12. (Optional) Click Save to allow the quiz to be started during meetings. 

Create a poll during webinar

  1. Sign in to the Zoom desktop client.
  2. Start a webinar as the host.
  3. In the meeting controls, click Polls/Quizzes .
  4. Do one of the following:
    • Click Create if there are no polls created yet.
    • In the top-right corner, click the plus icon  to add more polls to the existing ones.
  5. Click the title Untitled Poll... to give the poll a name.
  6. Review the question types and configuration options, then click the arrow to the right of the question title to select the question type.
  7. (Optional) Click + Add Question to add another question to the poll.
  8. (Optional) Click the ellipses at the bottom left of the creation window, then click Settings to configure the following options:
    • Require answers to be anonymous
  9. (Optional) Click the ellipses at the bottom left of the creation window, then click Preview see a preview.
  10. (Optional) Click Save to allow the poll to be started during webinars. 

How to use the Surveys & Polls library

You can manage a central library of polls for webinars. 

How to launch a poll in a webinar

Polls are not immediately available to webinar participants, as the host needs to launch a poll for participants to respond to. Hosts can create polls before or during the webinar.

During the webinar, all questions under a single poll will be asked when launched. You can create additional polls to ask questions at different times during the webinar.

  1. Start the scheduled webinar.
  2. In the webinar controls, click Polls/Quizzes .
  3. In the Polls/Quizzes window, click the name of the poll to open the details.
  4. (Optional) Click the ellipses icon to access the following options:
    • Click Edit to modify questions and answers to the poll, then click Save. 
    • Click Allow panelists to vote to choose if panelists can participate in the polling.
  5. Click Launch.
    The participants in the webinar will now be prompted to answer the polling questions. The host will be able to see the results live.
  6. Once you would like to stop the poll, click End Poll.
  7. Click the ellipses icon  to access the following options:
    • Re-launch Poll: Launches the poll again. 
      Note: If a poll is relaunched in a webinar, the poll report will only display the last poll occurrence. If you know you will need to launch the same poll twice and want both sets of data, consider creating a second poll with the same questions as the original to avoid relaunching. 
    • Download Results: This will launch your default web browser so that you can download the entire poll report, which shows what each participant chose, instead of the percentages of each choice.
      Note: To have this feature enabled, contact Zoom Support.
    • View Results from Browser: Launches your default web browser and displays the same polling results on the web page. 
    • Allow Panelists to vote: Click this option to change the setting, which will take effect if you re-launch the poll.
  8. Click Share Results to share the results with the participants in the meeting, then click Stop Sharing when needed.