WordNet
n. competition (real or figurative) for popular support
Wikipedia
A popularity contest is a real or hypothetical contest in which the sole criterion for winning is how many votes one gets, such that the winner is the most liked contestant. Although the phrase is often used disparagingly to suggest that other contests are excessively superficial, the term historically referred to real contests sponsored by newspapers in late 19th century and early 20th century America. In 1914, the legality of these contests was challenged. A Kentucky appeals court ruled that popularity contests did not violate the state's lottery law.
Usage examples of "popularity contest".
After he, Glenn, had spent twenty-one months doing everything humanly possible to impress Gilruth and the rest of the brass, it had been turned into a popularity contest among the boys.
In his eight years of working deep cover, Buchanan had dealt with controllers of various types, some of whom had a manner that would disqualify them from a popularity contest.
Macross Island had been gearing up for just such an event, but what Morris's people were proposing was not a beauty pageant in the traditional sense of the term-Jan's people knew better than to put their star up against seventeen-year-olds in a swimsuit competition-but more of a Miss Popularity contest based on each individual's contributions to the spirit and growth of the transplanted city.
She was the favorite of the audience, but it wasn't a popularity contest, and the judges decided that the Latvians had won.
This isn't a popularity contest, it's not the moral Olympics, and it's not church.
That was a strange way of looking at it, to see a funeral as a popularity contest in which final judgment was passed on a man's life by the number of people who attended, by the size of the crowd.