PHP is exactly what they have told you - a server side scripting language. What that means is that PHP will perform actions at the server level before rendering a page. This includes:
- Loading dynamic content from a database
- Posting information from a form to a database
- Sending it to an email address like what you want to do
- A lot of other stuff you'll learn if you stick with it.
To send an email when someone submits your form, the form needs to post to a PHP page.
Your form:
<form method="POST" action="sendmail.php">
<input type="text" name="name" />
<!-- Other inputs go here, etc. -->
<input type="submit" value="submit">
</form>
PHP to send the form (In sendmail.php)
<?php
$email = $_POST['inputName1'];
$name = $_POST['inputName2'];
$message = $_POST['inputName3'];
$phone = $_POST['inputName4'];
$yourEmail = "youremail@domain.com";
$to = $yourEmail;
$subject = "My Contact Form";
$message = $message;
$from = $email;
$headers = "From:" . $name;
mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers);
echo "Mail Sent.";
?>
Here is a tutorial I found via Google: http://www.daniweb.com/web-development/php/threads/38784/php-sendmail-tutorial
There are probably better ones, but that should get you started.
Long story short, you need to learn PHP, and javascript.
Your other requirement (The poll) can be done many different ways, just google "Set up an online poll" for different ways. You can probably use jQuery/javascript and JSON, or XML, etc to power the polls as well as php. This tutorial may help you with that: http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/javascript-ajax/creating-a-dynamic-poll-with-jquery-and-php/
Good luck.