mysql_num_rows always returns 1

Question

The result is always 1:

$sql = \'SELECT COUNT(Vote) FROM \' . $table;
$res = mysql_query($sql, $conn);
$vote_total = mysql_num_rows($res);

Answer 1

That query does return only one row. What you want is to retrieve the value from the query:

$row = mysql_fetch_array($res);
$vote_total = $row[0];