This is who the Time person of the year would be if the public decided

Time magazine has been holding its 'person of the year' award - for the man or woman who has made the greatest impact on humanity, for good or ill - since 1927.

The winner is decided upon by a committee of editors, but for a comparison the magazine has also been asking the public to vote for their choice since the 1990s.

This year's winner is Narendra Modi, India's newly elected, and somewhat controversial, prime minister.

Modi, the leader of the biggest democracy in the world, took 16 per cent of the nearly five million reader votes, beating "Ferguson protesters" and Hong Kong protest leader Joshua Wong into second and third place respectively.

Last year, General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt won the people's choice poll after leading a military coup against the democratically-elected Mohamed Morsi following public unrest.

The poll almost never reflects the final choice of the judges however - with Pope Francis winning the official 'person of the year' title last year.

In 2012, Kim Jong-un took the honours from the public, while the judges voted for Barack Obama and in 2011 they went for the rather abstract "protester" - reflecting protest movements like the Arab Spring, 15-M in Spain, the Tea Party movement and Occupy Wall Street.

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