Do people post this stuff just to earn karma points? What use would this half-thought through data set provide? and who would use it?

Can we NOT repeat the same polls again?

I suggest creating a Hacker News 'polls' section which lists a permanent list of polls ideally with a public data API and bonus points for a pub/sub mechanism to help 3rd party application developers build something that might actually be useful...

I'll even build it for you, but only if there is a purpose to it all.