The votes have been cast! Here are the top 10 newcomers for SSF2:

1. Zero (Megaman)
251

2. Shadow (Sonic)
209

3. Luffy (One Piece)
154

4. Knuckles (Sonic)
150

5. Rayman
141

6. Skull Kid (Zelda)
134

7. Geno (Super Mario RPG)
126

8. Ryu (Street Fighter)
110

9. Zoroark (Pokemon)
101

10. Banjo and Kazooie
101

The newest version of the poll can be found here:
http://www.poll-maker.com/poll236110xd05B2965-9

Go vote!

One little question: How can Banjo Kazooie be placed behind Zoroark if they have the same amount of votes?

The date the votes were cast are important.
I believe Zoroark got a better place than Banjo because he reached 101 before Banjo.
(Btw, why is Tingle in this poll if he's already a background character?)
I'm gonna admit it tho, this poll is certainly pretty exciting.

Strangely enough, King K. Rool and Ridley are the most wanted out there after a day's results.
I'm starting to think people actually thought this was an SSB4 poll when it's not.
Better wait till the end of the week to see if Zero ends up being on the top.

I'm guessing that people are just biased against the popular characters now. For example, you can see that Shadow and especially Luffy are much lower this time around (when I voted there were four people and none of us voted for Luffy at all).

There's also the fact that Ridley is a new addition to the poll and was the most wanted character for Smash 4 outside of maybe Mewtwo. Not too surprising to see that he is a popular pick for SSF2 as well.

King K. Rool's resurgence is a bit odd though.

Gangplank Galleon. It suits him perfectly.

I get why he's popular and wanted (I voted for him myself), but it's just odd to see someone who didn't make top 10 in the last poll take second in this new one.

Gangplank Galleon is perfect for him though.

I think Gharnef should be in the poll, He was the originl villain of the Fire Emblem series.

500 votes (literally) have been cast, and after a month, here are the current results. They are much bigger than last time.

1. King K. Rool (Donkey Kong Country)
153

2. Zero (Megaman X)
151

3. Ridley (Metroid)
139

4. Rayman
130

5. Shadow (Sonic)
129

6. Banjo and Kazooie
125

7. Geno (Super Mario RPG)
120

8. Paper Mario
119

9. Waluigi (Mario)
119

10. Knuckles (Sonic)
117

By "New" Pokemon Trainer, do you mean from X/Y or OmegaRuby/AlphaSapphire?

Any Pokemon Trainer from any region.

Is it possible to nominate a character or few?

After 3 months of voting (with more than 16000 votes) the results are in, check out who's in the top 20.

I'll be back in a few months to tell you the next results.

I was wondering why I never noticed this thread before, 2 month span bump.

Also I have the same question as Nova.

That may have been my fault xD But I think he does have moveset potential(jump super stars) and he has potential to be a super unique character never even done before in smash. Also he has some good sprites already done as well as being a popular character.
But people seem to have a huge problem with anime characters so I won't hold my breath on that one.