>>2857918I've never really paid attention to these kinds of polls but she seems to really popular in recent ones, maybe she just gained popularity over time if she wasn't as much back in the 90s.
Pic related is from 2015. I think it's really worth noting how almost all the other characters are either from recent stuff or have recent adaptations of their source material when the last Eva thing was 3.0 way back in 2012, which I doubt anything good for her popularity. This applies to the other NGE characters you can see in the image too of course, it's a testament to them all that they have such staying power.