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47,000. That’s a lot of votes. It shows how much people care about this community, as they’ve cast ballots, promoted their favorites on Facebook pages and asked friends to follow suit over the last few months.

Welcome to the reveal of The Herald’s Readers’ Choice winners, the yearly chance for all of you to voice your support for a specific institution. Maybe you wanted to show your support for a restaurant. Or maybe you were determined to cast a ballot for your kid’s school. Every year, we open up the nominations in May and then let people start voting in July.

It’s taken a month, but we’ve counted up all 47,000 votes for favorite restaurants, shops, schools and more, to present this list of winners, as chosen by all of you. In this winners list, we feature the overall winner and the top two finalists in every category.

Now, to be clear, this isn’t a scientific study. We didn’t use any complicated formula to determine the results. These are ranked based on the number of votes each group received. You may agree with some, disagree with others and a couple might catch you by surprise.

But regardless if your favorite won or made the finalist rankings, I’d ask you not to stop here. Don’t stop promoting your favorite places. When you’re proud of something a school did, talk them up to people. Share on Facebook why you like a business and encourage others to go there as well. That’s a great way we can help local operations, by serving as their cheering section.

To see who the winners are click here.