I'm going to skip over the made up statistics and reiterate that either a majority of playings voicing an opinion want it, or they don't, in which case as I suggested BioWare are implementing features that the majority don't want which sounds ridiculous even to me.
It's at this point where I have to concisely clarify what should be fairly obvious that I again can only conclude that you are being obtuse merely to avoid conceding defeat on this point.
Well that's a design flaw, but for the sake of hammering out this point let's assume it doesn't exist.
I think a better question is, why would they want to do more work than necessary? The only possible reward is a better group of players you know, trust and enjoy playing with but then you can still use the LFD tool and get the benefits.
As for the reward, I would assume that being auto grouped is enough for levelling or recently-max-level characters, the rewards beyond that (ie WoWs tokens each day) are a double edged sword. Sure they feel mandatory to top tier PvE players, but for newbies they are a godsend because they get gear faster and the benefit of experienced players. Given that there are more newbies and casuals than hard cores I would imagine that overall the effect is positive but I agree that it isn't all positives. But overall I think the system is beneficial. Bare in mind that without the LFD tool the hard cores would take longer to get their tokens, so while it may feel mandatory they are still reaping the rewards.
Well anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. I saw people spamming for players for speed or achievement runs and successfully forming groups in both WoW and RIFT, but that is just my experience.
Well ideally they should have known that that wouldn't be enough time and just moved the deadline back. Look at GW2, open(ish) beta testing, still no launch date. When it's ready should be every developers mantra.