I wish i could say Popularity polls are so fucking stupid to based on how to steer your story/character screentime on.
But at the end of the day, Manga is still an entertainment medium and ultimately is still business.
And business needs marketable characters, merch isn't going to sell themselves. A truckload of people get into a series because a certain character is designed a certain way despite having
the character depth of a puddle compared to everyone else.
And us thinking that good storytelling = popularity is surprisingly not how the majority of the world view it as large.
Look at how Bleach, despite how monkeybrained its writing was in the last arc, have such a huge cult like crowd praising it for having subtlely/good writing when ultimately they can't accept that they only love it because of how shallow it is and their love of it is more a reflection on themselves than anything else.
And Boruto, a series that took a nosedive in quality and writing that would be walked out the door in any place, still have investment/people defending it/watching it solely because of its predecessor series. And STILL thinking that one day it'll blow up and get good.
I'm going to come out and say it that there's really no reason for Sabo to be that high in popularity polls. Law's popularity is 100% carried by his design and appearance.
And I'm almost certain that Franky and Brook will never get any sort of real character development/meaning screen time because of their popularity but that has to also do with Oda introducing middle aged man and not knowing what the fuck to do with them in a kids medium.
Also like, who in the world is 26. I feel like I know him from somewhere but holy shit him ranking above frog girl is ridiculous.
I don't blame the authors as much as I would like though. Growing an actual backbone is hard in an industry that, when you look past all the smokes and glamour, is ultimately just a business vehicle that only cares about what sells over good storytelling. So many series were axed despite having so much potential for a really good story in the long term but the illusion of Jump is that despite their series talking about risks and dreams, is nothing more than a conservative corporate business that fears risk.
It's almost sad and depressing how reality truly is and makes you admire the truly greats like Toriyama and Togashi.
The greats in this genre were really those that shoved a middle finger to editorial/marketing decisions and stuck to/capitalize hard on their series individualism. The former being the likes of Togashi, and the later being the likes of Fujimoto and Araki.
I'm sure they worked hard but the editiorial in Jump is so fucking ridiculous right now. Just look at how many exorcist/demons/sorcery series they've been letting run.
It's insufferable how much of the system, and the people in it, self sabotage themselves. A common misconception is that Jump is largely successful because of its system/management/editorial. No, its not. They're only successful because a few pioneer mangakas hard carried their fucking ass and made the magazine first. And every once in a 100 authors comes someone that, evidently only seeing JUMP as the place to be because of its reach and their own youthful outlook, comes in, sink a few years to decades of their lifespan and health, and creates something that carries their revenue for another few years.