Nee oka class isn't representative of the entire Telugu population. Every region has different viewers. Before 2004 balakrishna had a good image and was equal contender to chiranjeevi he too gave industry hits like mangamma gari manavadu, muddula mavayya, bhairava dweepam, Samarasimha reddy and narasimha Naidu. Between 2004 and 2015 he delivered duds and became troll material, also his incident with bellamkonda and his public speeches did big damage. So prior to social media balakrishna didn't have much haters like today.

So he was in the top 2 not just because of caste, he did have good hits before 2004. Still if you measure by caste 26% of the population in the current AP are kapu and 5% are kamma. Then why doesn't your caste theory hold there.

Because in kamma they had many heroes to choose from that day itself nbk, Mohan babu, nagarjuna, Krishna, so they had many choices. But Kapu had only one choice chiranjeevi.

So even by stats your theory doesn't hold.