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There's a few more points I wanted to add.
I don't think more casual voters even thinks about Divisions when they vote. They just vote for their favorite girls, period.
More hardcore ISML followers may think about Divisions, but they'll tend to vote on any match that has characters they know in it (unless it's too close to call for them, based on equal degrees of liking/'meh'ing for both girls). They're not going to conscientiously skip entire divisions.
And there's been plenty of first year girl vs. first year girl matches that had excellent combined vote totals. I don't see much evidence that voters care substantially less about first-year girls than they do older girls.
If you removed the weakest returning girls from both divisions, shifted over the 2nd year girls to Stella, and then filled the resulting empty slots with more new girls, I don't think it would have a significant negative impact on vote totals or fan interest. In fact, it might even grow more fan interest, as people might be more interested in getting to see who would emerge as the top girl in Nova.
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