It's a strange time when you are less likely to get impaled standing next to Marrow than Rachel Grey.
A. As international hero he got invited.
B. Many of the X-men like him.
C. Many mutants can relate to him.
D. He is an allround nice guy.
Seen that question a few times. My guess would be that the winner was allready more or less clear after the first results were revealed (overall a terrible mistake on Marvel's part since it manipulated the voting behaviour for the rest of the time) and nobody really talked about the whole Gala thing anymore outside of maybe forums like this. So they wanted to create some attention again and pre-emptively revealed the resutl of the fan vote.
I'm not even much of a fan of him, but still think he is underused, considering he is a veteran character and has mostly been dead or used as quick punching bags these past two decades.