Wow, jQuery is still one of the most popular web frameworks. That was unexpected...
Don't get me wrong - I completely understand why you wouldn't want to use it if you can help it, but honestly, for many uses it's still not a bad choice in my honest opinion.
jQuery was ranked "most popular web framework" (48.7%) but it was also ranked 2nd place for "most dreaded web framework" (54.7%). I suspect that there may be a lot of older projects/sites that still rely heavily on jQuery, thus accounting for high popularity - and possibly the "most dreaded" title.