In general, it seems like the most popular characters were older characters who were already fairly popular before Ultimate. I suppose it's because of Ultimate's differing priorities; Most Smash games are a mix of popular requests and whoever's relevant to the current console, but Ultimate prioritized veterans above all else, and ballot picks second, leaving us with only 11 newcomers (Including five clones) and four stages in the base game. Then the DLC shifted to primarily third-parties, and the few Nintendo characters were from Switch games specifically. To me, the poll confirms that there's a fair bit of characters who did decently well on the ballot but got screwed over by the limited roster space. Of course, this also doesn't include third-parties, but it still shows there's a fair few first-parties that would be met with applause.
In my ideal world BWD would still keep top vote, but ah well. A very close second is still really good. Actually I'm surprised Dixie managed to take first place, though the setup being a casual "Who'd you be chill with?" rather than a "What's your absolute MOST WANTED???" probably benefited her a lot. I was personally expecting Waluigi to be on top, or perhaps Bandana Dee keeping his momentum.
It's cool how Ashley and especially Krystal managed to stay on popular despite fizzling out during Ultimate's cycle due to being trophied. Krystal especially, since Star Fox has been dormant on the Switch and Krystal herself has been MIA for even longer.
Octoling and Raven Beak are the only Switch newcomers to crack the top ten. Octoling is to be expected, but Raven Beak's a bit of a surprise. The biggest surprise is multiple Kid Icarus characters maintaining modest popularity, even without a game in over a decade. There's also Chibi-Robo being the second most popular new series pick; He doesn't have the same push as Isaac and he doesn't have any recent games either, so I expected Andy or Ayumi to beat him.
Zelda's divided requests have been discussed a lot already. Fire Emblem is also somewhat divided. I think FE in particular is hampered by both the stigma of endless swordbois and Engage just not hitting it as big as Three Houses, with a hypothetical moveset for Alear being assumed to be too derivative. This leaves us without a major recent frontrunner, especially since we'll most likely have a new FE for the Switch 2 by the time we get to the next Smash. Though, I kinda assumed the Three Houses cast might do a bit better; Instead, the top three FE characters are the three Assist Trophies.