I don't know if such a thing is possible but I've posted many polls on the forum, and the one thing that's been abit troubling is the fact once you post a thread and are taken to enter the poll data it's immediately made available to people for viewing. Wouldn't it make more sense to postpone the posting of the thread until the poll is filled out by the originator, that way people won't be left wondering "what poll"?

It used to be like that, but I think the new forum update changed all that. It's like this on another forum I visit. There might be 3 replies before a poll is ever seen.

It's stupid and I don't know what the point of it is.

maybe you could have two radio buttons for when you start a thread.
one for post thread and the other for post poll.
if the poll is ticked then the thread will delay posting until the poll is complete.