Worst thing in popularity is not being considered, or found.
Looks like TIOBE is not alone in differentiating Delphi and Pascal [1], other popularity indexes share the same issue:
More indexes I looked at didn’t show the “runners up”, only the top 5 or top 10, but they may as well have differentiated.
For lang-index, merging Pascal (rank 11) and Delphi (24), would be enough to reach rank 10, ahead of Ruby, just shy of Perl.
For langpop, the results vary depending on indicators, but always up a few ranks, and into the top 10 in at least one case (hard figures are not given, so that’s just gauging the bar sizes).
Is popularity important? Yes, it affects perception by the industry at large.
Moving Pascal up in the popularity indexes from “obscure language” into the “mainstream but not commonplace” can’t hurt, can it?