I would want to add two points here.
First, there is direct and indirect. A negative or less than perfect rating could indirectly impact popularity. I assume this to be not much of an issue. Having ratings at all is a huge thing for small time developers. And certain content is prone to have haters or to have fans that are not fully satisfied. Actually compared on a global scale of ratings, most games here would not even score a 0. They have to be compared in their context. And if you compare between similar games from similar developers, some users that do rate have to adjust their scale. They can't just rate everything 5, else the 5 would be meaningless. No room for improvement.
Which brings me to the second point, similar games, or rather ratings in game jams. There are some discussions about ratings you might find in community about ratings adjustments and how a 4 star rating might have an impact. This is a separate ranking to find out who "won" the jam. Since ratings are few, there has to be weighting and adjustments to be somewhat fair.
So what is popularity even? On Itch it is not the click counter. It cannot be, since it is a secret composition, that even includes an undisclosed boost for new games for an undisclosed time. Maybe it includes click count. Maybe it adjusts click count in relation to downloads. A clickbaity game would attract lots of clicks, but few downloads. How to calculate "popularity" from that? What if many clicks come from the same source? Like Youtube. Is that worth more or less than internal clicks from browse and search? What about recurring users (followers). Are visits from your followers worth more or less in popularity than interaction from a new user?
Oh, and there is a ranking for ratings, it is top-rated. Maybe your answers got mixed up with answers for that. Or not. But as it is with that one pirate captain in that one movie, iirc, the conversation went like this: you are the worst captain I have ever heard about. - But you heard about me.