IMHO, there is just too much Star Wars now to ever get a nice uniform agreement on fan polls anymore.
Hasbro is so fractured trying to serve all it's masters (TVC vs TBS; OT vs PT/TCW vs ST vs D+ vs EU/video games). Too many movies/shows and not enough basic figure slots to serve everyone what they want in a large enough quantity. It's a bummer, but it's reality.
I agree. There are definitely some generational divides among fans. And while online communities can be great for bringing people together, the tribalism that it breeds can get a little ugly. So that segmenting has been a natural development in large part because of the timespan from the beginnings of the franchise to the current day.
Everyone has their own criteria for their votes. For me? There's a level of exhaustion with the OT because of how long I've been in this. How many times can we go back to the well with some characters? Some figure manufacturing developments have left a lot of older figures looking just that - old. But sometimes to update something just for one little tweak seems a bit much. Something that drove me crazy in the TVC communities was this obsession with rocker ankles. If a figure didn't have rocker ankles, then it couldn't possibly be considered perfect. That level of obsession was too much for me, and it got me more interested in characters that had not been made before in the interest of getting something that felt more fresh.
Scott - I share your frustration that high profile characters and resculpts are part of these. But something that trends in the MM poll have shown is that there are some consistent wants. A number of characters have been in the running every year since the SWTVC guys started this whole thing. Should Baylan and Shin have already been made by now? Absolutely! But I think their absence should also be a reality check for collectors. We're not in the golden days of 2005 - 2013 anymore.
