Ballots to determine the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class of 2015 were due today. The inductees will likely be announced early next week. Tickets for the induction ceremony go on sale to Rock Hall members on December 17th and the general public the following day.

The official fan poll voting also wrapped up on December 9th. The top five had been pretty well established for the last couple of weeks, so there were no last minute changes in the polls. The biggest surprise occurred after the poll closed and the Rock Hall posted the enormous final vote totals (which had not been revealed yet -- only the percentages).

1. Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble 31.04% (18,331,506 votes)
2. Nine Inch Nails 22.20% (13,114,449 votes)
3. Joan Jett & the Blackhearts 15.08% (8,907,057 votes)
4. Bill Withers 6.49% (3,830,587 votes)
5. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band 6.25% (3,692,959 votes)
6. Lou Reed 5.29% (3,121,379 votes)
7. War 2.67% (1,575,036 votes)
8. Green Day 2.59% (1,527,135 votes)
9. Sting 1.75% (1,034,505 votes)
10. N.W.A 1.29% (761,395 votes)
11. Kraftwerk 1.15% (681,999 votes)
12. The Smiths 1.12% (662,229 votes)
13. The Spinners 1.12% (661,758 votes)
14. The Marvelettes 0.98% (580,523 votes)
15. Chic 0.98% (578,506 votes)

That’s a total of 59,060,935 votes! Last year, there were only 1,390,504 votes cast in the fan poll (which included KISS and Nirvana). This is what the voting looked like last year -- pretty consistent percentages throughout the voting process.

Now look at this year’s graph:

Those are tumultuous results given the high volume of votes! There are swings in the polls of hundreds of thousands of votes over short periods of time, well after the initial publicity of the poll has worn off.

Internet polls can be very unreliable and subject to votebots. The previous two years, the Rock Hall outsourced the fan poll to Polldaddy.com, who at least specializes in online polls. This year, the Rock Hall hasn’t disclosed who is running their poll or even the simple rules for voting (how often can you vote from a device? an IP address? is there a limit at all?). All we know is that the top five will get one extra vote each, thrown in the with the results from the greater Voting Committee that will determine the 2015 inductees.

We conduct our own unofficial poll here which, unlike the official Rock Hall poll, requires voters to select five artists on their ballot. The results (after 1309 ballots):

1. The Smiths 51%
2. Lou Reed 47%
3. Green Day 45%
4. Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble 45%
5. Nine Inch Nails 43%
6. Kraftwerk 42%
7. Joan Jett & the Blackhearts 33%
8. Bill Withers 31%
9. War 27%
10. N.W.A 26%
11. The Marvelettes 26%
12. Sting 23%
13. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band 23%
14. The Spinners 19%
15. Chic 19%

That is a whole lot of prelude to our predictions, but here are the six artists we predict will be inducted in 2015:

• Green Day: Don’t let their poor showing in the Rock Hall fan poll fool you. This band has been tracking as a first-ballot Hall of Famer since American Idiot was released ten years ago.
• Lou Reed: He was nominated in 2000 and 2001 but for some reason disappeared from the Rock Hall ballot until after he died late last year. He is clearly the sentimental favorite, but no less deserving.
• Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble: The image on our homepage has included Stevie Ray Vaughan since 2006, but this is the first time he has been nominated for induction. We’re betting the voters have been waiting for a chance to make him a Hall of Famer.
• Bill Withers: Although he has been out of the music game for a long time, he likely hits a sentimental sweet spot with the voters.
• Nine Inch Nails: Trent Reznor already has a large trophy case for his Oscar, Golden Globe and Grammys, which just proves the respect that he commands in the industry. He’s #94 on Rolling Stone’s Immortals list, which is full of Hall of Famers.
• Sting: While you’re on that Immortals page, check out who VH1 had as their #63 artist of all-time back in 1998... Sting! (Stevie Ray Vaughan was #70.) Sting has been in the news lately, with his Broadway musical and the recent Kennedy Center Honors.

Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, Chic or the Paul Butterfield Blues Band are the most likely candidates that will be proving us wrong. We’ll find out soon enough.