For the voting gauntlet, I only have Robin, Henry, Merric, and Tharja in my box. I'm forced to back one of these even when I like the other girls much much more. This is the biggest flaw of these voting gauntlets: you have to vote against your will if you care about feathers and I have to care about feathers because of my constantly abysmal luck in pulls and the fact that feather is the only thing I can rely on in building my team. Dear IS, you are sending the wrong message when you called these "popularity vote".
Rant aside, I still need to come up with a feather-centric strategy here. First of all, I will keep myself far way from the Tharja crowd, at least for the first round. Robin's probably pretty popular too, and lots of people's got him so for the first round, I may back Henry or Merric. Probably Merric because fewer people know who he is. However, I have learned my lesson last time so this time I'm definitely going to wait for a hour or two, see the early results to better gauge the competitiveness levels in different teams before picking sides.
After Merric (or Henry, whoever I pick) is slaughtered, I probably will have to switch to Robin if he pass the first round. I hope he passes the 2nd round as well because in that case I don't have to join Tharja in the final round to face the most serious competition.