I don't believe that vanilla racials are the sole reason for why people choose their FACTION. That was also not at all the WOW TBC Gold experience I had when I was younger. Even our Rank 1 friend I had a few games with decided to go with Tauren because he was convinced that they were cool.
While no one has stated that, it's obvious that the factions were not created randomly. It's not that everyone would like to have fun with their friends. This is absurd.
Ion discussed retail WoW in which there aren't servers or a mega-server that you can play with anyone in your region. It's balanced overall, although Alliance is more skilled players than Horde.
It's not balanced for the real gamers. It might be balanced in terms of the number of characters created, but that is impossible to verify. You can log in to view the M+ keys and pug raids. I have max level characters in both buy WOW Burning Crusade Classic Gold factions. But the level of skill differs greatly. It can be difficult to assess independently. It's likely due to the fact that everybody who is truly interested in taking on serious rerolls in order to horde.