How would any know? You would need stats of some type. The amount of people discussing a certain subject on the forum vs the amount of people playing the game.
From time to time, there will be a poll where the results do not seem to match what it seen in the game. At other times, ZOS has released a statistic about the game that does not reflect the general opinion of the forum. The disconnect is clear.
The people in the forum are, by far, more interesting than the general population of the game, though!
I think it comes in waves. You get a small percentage of people who are invested in the status quo and they are afraid of change.
What exacerbates the problem this time are a small minority of popular streamers who spread a lot of misinformation and / or deliberately sour the waters because Zenimax doesn't kiss their buts and do what they say. They don't want to re-do their videos or change their play style to a less EGO driven play style.