From a poll of readers at handloads.com, here are the top results, with percentages of the vote they got. I doubt the results of this poll would be the same worldwide. It also seems a little odd not to see cartridges like the .22LR high up in the results, which they surely are in terms of the total number of rounds purchased and fired.
1. 45 ACP (27.5%)
2. 357 magnum (24.2%)
3. 44 magnum (18.8%)
4. 45 Colt (15.4%)
5. 454 Casull (4.5%)
6. 9mm (4.1%)
I would have to rate the .38 spl at number 5 and drop the Casull out of the top 6. The .22lr would not place due to it being a rifle cartridge first. MHO would also place the .45 colt in 2nd place dropping .357 and 44 down one place. There is a strong reason to bump the 9mm up, now I am making it a mess so here is my new honest opinion on how I see the top 6:
1-.45lc (it really got the whole thing going)
2-.45acp
3-9mm (hey, it has drove the world guns for almost a century now)
4-.38spl
5-.357 mag
6-.44 mag
It's funny I guess, like a lot of polls, there's some ambiguity about what is meant by the world's "greatest cartridges." Does the poll mean, "great" in the sense that you as an individual prefer a given cartridge, or does it mean that you should rank them according to what is your perception of the most frequently USED cartridges around the world?
Agreed that for the sake of discussion, let's leave rimfire out of it and just focus on centerfire.
So now let's say we phrase the question this way:
What centerfire handgun caliber do you think is most popular worldwide, based on the total number of handguns chambered for it?
Putting it this way, I'd probably say 9mm wins, or 38 special.
But if we make the question not about quantity, not about our individual preferences, but about overall utility or usefulness, it looks like this:
What centerfire handgun caliber can be used most effectively in the widest range of shooting situations, from self-defense, to combat, to various competitions, to hunting multiple classes of game?
When you word it that way, I'd probably say the .357 mag comes out on top. You can download a .357 for home d and target or competition shooting, so that it can do things no heavy caliber revolver would be very effective at. And you can load it for tactical work, penetration of barriers, etc., in a way that most semiauto calibers today could not do as well. But you can also load up a .357 with heavy hunting loads to take good-sized game, game that no 9mm, 40 S&W, or even 45 ACP, would really be as effective for.
But if you phrase the question this way:
What centerfire handgun caliber is your personal favorite?
This is what I would guess the original poll was getting at. And it doesn't surprise me that in the U.S., among handgunners, the 45 ACP is the darling cartridge, even if it is not the one that has the most ammo manufactured for it, and even if it does not have the most new handguns per year chambered for it. The high cost of 45 guns, and ammo, holds many back from shooting it as often as they'd like. But I still think that among experienced shooters, having a nice-quality 45, especially a nicely customized 1911 with a good trigger, is viewed as a higher class of shooting, and more of an enjoyable and quality experience than just blasting away with some tupperware 9mm gun. I don't think that's an elitist type of thing, it's just that shooters, like car owners, prefer a more "classy" experience when they can get it. Just like driving a Mercedes is more fun than driving a Ford Taurus, shooting a nicely tuned 1911 is more fun than shooting a 9mm plastic Taurus.
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