Creating a poll inside a content type
Possible solution 1: The Pollfield module seems to be a good starting point. This should do what you need for Drupal 6. However, it might not be a stable solution for Drupal 7.

Possible solution 2: It seems the Poll Improved module might be fit your requirements seeing that provides a field for polls. Though it also doesn't have a stable D7 release. 


  They don't want to create an extra poll with no connection to the original article.


You can use references (or entityreference) to have your article nodes reference a poll node. Though that would require another step for your content creators.