The variance is extremely high though. Only a small percent of users interact with any given story. Sometimes a posted story gets no traction, then sticks on the front page for many hours when reposted another day.
This is about up/down-voting comments, not upvoting stories.
There isn't really a lot of variance when it comes to the top voted comments on popular stories. Especially when it concerns the big tech companies. The opinions are fairly predictable.
There is a reason voting works (in this context, and otherwise), you can't always give up after declaring that people have differing opinions.