@vkc Voted for KDE although I gave up on both of them a couple years ago for Enlightenment which is SO MUCH BETTER! ;)
1) I dislike Gnome because I don't want to have to rely on a bunch of third-party extensions from god only knows where for crap that should just be a checkbox in the settings app.
2) Last time I used Gnome I couldn't even use the system settings app anyway -- it was taller than my screen, it wouldn't let me move it, it wouldn't let me shrink it, I couldn't hit the apply button because it was off the screen and about 80% of that vertical space was just empty space between options. They prioritize obnoxious unnecessary white space over basic accessibilty.
3) I gave up on KDE shortly after 4.0 not because it lacked any features or functionality, but because it was a bit slow and a bit unstable. So if forced to choose I'd just hope those issues had improved.