> If you overcharge the negative choices, it's kind of given most of the answers will fall in them

That's not how it works. The voters are asked to rank all options according to their preference, and a winner is chosen according to an extended Condorcet criterion. Adding similar options doesn't affect the outcome.

You should read up on how they conduct votes. Every voter essentially gets a chance to rank every option against every other option. So the number of options should not impact the vote totals.

You forget human perception. If I expose someone to 10 negative statements and only 2 positive ones, you believe that this does not affect their overall perception of the issue?

I'm sure it does, but I don't believe it does materially in this case. People are going to have a perception of other terms, e.g. RMS, as well. While yes, what you describe may have influenced an emotional response, I see no evidence that would have changed the outcome.

You do realize that the community needs to propose and sponsor these options, right?

Fewer people being willing to propose a pro-RMS option is an indication of which way the tide is moving, even if you still want to argue about why this might be the case.

it only takes a few people to sponsor options, and plenty of people have sponsored options that they would not vote for because they believed that these options should be available.

That's exactly my point. If sponsoring options is done by the community, and is relatively easy, then fewer proposed options in one category does suggest that this category is unpopular with the community.

If there are several variations of anti-RMS proposals, it suggests that enough people care about the specifics of how the rebuke is worded, etc., but that generally there is enthusiasm about an anti-RMS stance.

If there are fewer pro-RMS proposals, then either they were proposed by people who don't support that option, but are putting it forward because they think it should exist as an option (as you suggest), or because there are fewer people who are enthusiastic enough to care about the minutia of how a support message is to be worded. Either way, that seems to me like less enthusiasm around an anti-RMS proposal.

new options are only proposed when existing options do not represent all available opinions.

similar proposals can also be merged, and only options that make sense are being sponsored. and they are sponsored also by people who oppose that option because those people believe that the options should be balanced.

the existing options list all sensible outcomes. i can't think of any other pro- or anti-RMS option that would even make sense.

based on that i can't see how you want to extract any data on popularity