What is the best Pokemon? Community crowns their winner

Paul Cot

The question of who is the best Pokemon is a debate that will likely never end, so we decided to find out the answer once and for all (sort of).

Composing a question to find out, fairly, who the best Pokemon is, is a challenge in and of itself. If we gave every trainer one vote, out of all species, then Pikachu would likely perform way better than realistic given the character’s media popularity.

On the other hand, if we limited it to just a handful of ‘mons then one could easily be missed out. So, we needed to do something to combine the two.

First off, we asked our nearly 300,000 followers on the Dexerto Pokemon Twitter page which Pokemon they believed is the very best. Naturally this generated a lot of responses with lots of different species of Pokemon.

We had a rough idea as to what species would be the most popular but a couple surprised us. Gengar was one that appeared as much as any other when scrolling through. Equally, the lack of Pikachu and Eevee responses was also fascinating.

Best Pokemon poll

Now, since we had a lot of replies to work with, we took the four most-frequently quoted Pokemon and put them into a separate poll. Those Pokemon were Bulbasaur, Charizard, Gengar, and Riolu.

These options aren’t perfect and many will argue that the likes of Squirtle, Mewtwo, and Lugia should be included. Unfortunately we were limited to four and the ones included were dictated by the community’s responses.

The results of the poll, which had 2,439 votes, were as follows:

  • Charizard – 39.8%
  • Gengar – 24.5%
  • Riolu – 21%
  • Bulbasaur – 14.8%

Yes that means, to the dismay of many, Charizard is the best Pokemon — at least according to our poll. The Pokemon Company have often been mocked for their apparent Charizard obsession, but given these results we can understand why.

Meanwhile, Gengar ousted Riolu for 2nd place, proving that the most infamous ghost-type Pokemon is underrated within the franchise. Bulbasaur picked up a respectable 15% of the vote, showing the first ‘mon in the Pokedex is worthy of such a place.

In truth there are various ways to find out which the best Pokemon is and each of them could very well have different results. For example, Charizard may have won here but it could also feature highly on a least favorite poll due to its polarizing nature. For now though, like it or not, Charizard is on top.