Ferguson Protesters Surge in TIME’s Person of the Year Poll

Vote Now for TIME’s Person of the Year.

With just 10 days left to go before TIME’s 2014 Person of the Year polls come to a close, TIME readers have given Ferguson protestors a huge boost in votes, following a grand jury’s decision Monday not to indict the white police officer who fatally shot unarmed black teenager Michael Brown.

Ferguson protestors stand at 7.7% in the Person of the Year poll as of early Wednesday, edging out Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hong Kong protestor Joshua Wong. The bump comes after violent unrest in the St. Louis suburb seen this week and subsequent demonstrations that rippled through the country, expressing solidarity with the slain 18-year-old’s family. From New York to Minneapolis and Los Angeles, large crowds gathered Monday and Tuesday chanting the rallying cry, “Black lives matter.”

Should the Ferguson Protestors Be TIME’s Person of the Year? Vote Below for #TIMEPOY

Narendra Modi, the newly elected Indian prime minister, still has a significant lead in the rankings, with 12.2% of the vote as of Wednesday morning. As the leader of the largest democracy in the world, Modi has raised high hopes among Indians that he can invigorate the country’s economy and cut bureaucratic red tape that has slowed development in India.

Trailing Modi and the Ferguson protestors are Russian President Vladimir Putin, with 6.4%, who was TIME’s Person of the Year in 2007, and the youngest Nobel Peace Prize-winner ever, Malala Yousafzai.

Since 1927, TIME has named a person who for better or worse has most influenced the news and our lives in the past year.

The Person of the Year is selected by TIME’s editors, but readers are asked to weigh in by commenting on any TIME Facebook post that includes #TIMEPOY, tweeting your vote using #TIMEPOY, or by heading over to TIME.com’s Person of the Year voting hub, where Pinnion’s technology is recording, visualizing and analyzing results as they are received. Votes from Twitter, Facebook and TIME.com’s voting hub are pooled together to create the totals displayed on the site. You can see the results of the poll and vote on your choice for person of the year here.