Hi,
Browser and localhost issues are a nightmare for a programmer, and I have seen many problems with it. So quite a few can have their cause there.
The disappearing text issue won't be hard to fix. If you display the page without text, and view the page source in your browser, you will probably discover there that the texts are present, but invisible. This could very well be a CSS issue, where the style for the text is redefined in that specific template. The style for the poll box is 'sideBoxContent'.
If the site is accessible from outside, I can also have a look for you.
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