Wofano Wotanto
Hero
The new edition is relatively recent (less than a year) and is still coming out, which keeps it in the news (and new DTRPG listings) to some degree. You might have had different results if you'd run this before the edition was announced and the system had been fallow for longer.What has been cool to me that it hasn't (yet!) received any "Never Heard Of" votes.
It's hard to recall these days, but ICE also had a pretty serious ad budget back when gaming magazines really meant something. If you were old enough to recall that era, you probably saw an ad or review in some mag or zine at some point. It probably also benefits a bit from ICE's old association with Hero Games, as well as MERP putting them in at least the fringe of the conversation when talking about LotR.
Between having new releases and its past history roleplayers are likely have at least heard of it - and the ones who haven't probably won't open the thread to vote, so there's some poll bias there, too.