What shipping is popular is debatable, you can't really say Amour or Poke is more popular without a massscale poll. That would show the facts.
I think Amour is the most popular ship, but that's just me. I know you guys pretty much dominated back in the old days though...
Masscale poll would not work. Especially an online one where you could vote multiple times and even if it was changed to one vote per IP. You could program a bot, or even a VPN to change your IP. Online polls are the least plausible determination of anything.
I can guarantee you 110% though that Pokeshipping is more popular than Amourshipper? Do you want to know why? Nostalgia. Pokemon's BIGGEST audience was when it first came out in the 90's. The anime is not even a quarter of how popular it was back then. You saw a the power of nostalgia with Pokemon Go and that was clearly cause of the 90's kids and all the wonderful dating apps that appeared with the game that guess what? Promoted a red headed female and black haired male trainer as the perfect match. Gee I wonder whom those two are supposed to represent?
With nostalgia comes love for the characters from that time. Misty, Brock, Ash, Gary, etc. Also love for the pairings from childhood.
Ash/Misty is just as iconic as Usagi/Mamoru, Chichi/Goku, Vegeta/Bulma, Takeru/Hikari, Taichi/Sora/Yamato, Syaoran/Sakura, Haruka/Michiru, etc. Serena and Ash do not have that iconic presence. For one cause of how new it is(only one gen knows of Serena and again not many people watch the anime nowadays compared to when it first came out) and well...it's one sided
Look on Social Media, numbers don't lie. Go look on Tumblr, you would think a gif set of this big AM moment would be meant with tons of tons of notes...nope. Nothing compared to the original dub voices of Ash and Misty posting videos of them going for a drive together. Nostalgia once again.
The Pokemon gaming community is still huge to this day. The Pokemon anime community is not at all anywhere near what it was back in the day. That is a fact.
I was thinking, if Misty showed up in Alola... It'd be great if it were water-based, and she were his rival for the season. And his new travelling companions could be curious about their relationship, and maybe tease them. Ah, that'd be the best!
Hey that would be great, Ash would do something he never did in XY, blush. He always blushed when people teased him about Misty and his relationship.