  We present probabilistic interpretations of solutions to semi-linear
parabolic equations with polynomial nonlinearities in terms of the voting
models on the genealogical trees of branching Brownian motion (BBM). These
extend the connection between the Fisher-KPP equation and BBM discovered by
McKean in~\cite{McK}. In particular, we present ``random outcome'' and ``random
threshold'' voting models that yield any polynomial nonlinearity $f$ satisfying
$f(0)=f(1)=0$ and a ``recursive up the tree'' model that allows to go beyond
this restriction on $f$. We compute a few examples of particular interest; for
example, we obtain a curious interpretation of the heat equation in terms of a
nontrivial voting model and a ``group-based'' voting rule that leads to a
probabilistic view of the pushmi-pullyu transition for a class of
nonlinearities introduced by Ebert and van Saarloos.
