Frontier don't need to give out numbers, "majority by a significant margin" is quite clear - well over 50% play open mode.
As for the ED mega survey, it's worthless. It wasn't run by Frontier, so you have no idea if people were cheating / voting more than once.
And as Reddit accounts are free, anyone could vote as many times as they want to create email accounts & Reddit accounts.
So I trust Frontier way more than I trust some random person on Reddit.
So let's derail the topic, why not. You can question the ED survey just like you can question any other scientific survey or study if you like. Just like I can question FD's 2,8% statement or their nonspecific "majority by a significant margin" statement.
Once again, if you count solo, PG and open separately then -already- would open be the most popular mode. The ED survey and FD's statement are -not- conflicting because "majority by a significant margin" is not clear at all. Majority relative to the entire playerbase, or relative to the other game modes? How does FD decide which mode you prefer? Did they count the hours? Did they count how often you logged in to one mode? I don't know, and you don't know. The ED survey is non-ambiguous there and the best estimate we will ever get.
And just so I get this right, you're basically saying that a bunch of people or a hacker decided to maniupulate the survey to show that open has less players than it really has? Really? Not to mention that the survey had a whole lot of other questions, why would this specific one with great effort be manipulated and for what purpose?