I get why Dylan and Ellie are popular, and certainly some of that is about future potential. It's the cluttered votes at the bottom that I don't understand. A whole bunch of characters that L&P has spent a lot of time trying to develop are under-performing compared to characters that barely exist. If I were a creator, it would bug the hell out of me that the old men were ranked so low because I would feel like I hadn't done a good job endearing them to the audience. Therefore, I would run a poll that targeted these secondary and minor characters more directly in order to better understand my audience. While you don't want to make a game solely based on player feedback, sometimes course correcting isn't a bad thing.
The first problem with the poll is that one can give multiple votes.
Also I don't think it is a failure on the part of L&P in character portrayal, it is firstly the fact that most people are wanting Sophia corrupted and doing extreme stuff, so they vote for they ones with the most potential for that. Majority of the players of the corruption genre are avidly into rape, sexual harassment and forced content, since that is what they get in every game. Even though l&p's game is different there mentally doesn't change. The janitor gets votes because of the whole queen of spades and interracial fetish and the BBC. The fact that the subway thugs got so many votes even though they haven't been seen for so long, again is proof that people like the forced stuff. Liam is the most wholesome route but people are most averse to it.
Secondly the old men are not attractive to begin with, no matter how well they are written, I have no interest in looking at a render with just the two of them in it. The only reason why the storyline is alive is Sophia. In the poll they are not backed by Sophia, on an individual standing they aren't popular, the votes they got this time is most probably because of the bias that they were in the recent update.