Why does the Empire outnumber the Republic?

I picked Sith because I thought they were going to be the low pop faction just like horde was at the beginning of warcraft.

lol, lookit me as I pull fake facts out of my arse!

I originally rolled Republic because my friend was playing Republic but I just couldn't go through with it and changed to empire.
The Sith have always been my favorite part about Star Wars. I can't not play Sith. The compulsion to play Sith is so strong that I would rather play by myself with a bunch of people I don't know than play with my friends who are playing on the same server but on the boring faction.

Also, can someone explain to me why a larger population would give an advantage in warzones? I played Rift during launch and the blue team having a lower population than red team actually gave them an advantage in warfronts rather than a disadvantage because a lower population meant warfronts would pop more often, which meant players would rank up faster on the lower population side which meant they got better PVP gear earlier. Why is the opposite true for TOR?

There are a few reasons, a main one would be there are more competent pvpers on the bad guy side in most games. They are often more into things like profession stacking and general organization. So you will win more on the villian side in most cases.

In this game the Republic was pretty poorly portrayed in my opinion as well. In the hype videos sith kill the jedi both times in one on one situations, in the alderaan based one the sith fights a two on one with one of the jedi being a council member. They also have much better race choices and better looking gear for the most part.

Those would be my explanations.

because 90% of tose who go imps say ( bad guys are cooler) i dont even know what that means.
they just troubled people who suffered some horrible incident in their childhood

But in Rift the good guys were the lower population side by far and they also won far more often. In my experience in MMOs, its not the bad guys that win more often, its the lower population faction that wins more often, at least in instanced pvp. It always seems the hardcore pvpers flock to the lower population side, I'm wondering why that isn't the case in TOR.

Haven't played imp yet, so can't say much, but if you played KotOR I seriously can't understand not rolling a female trooper... Jennifer Hale (Bastilla Shan) ftw!

Storylines might even favor imps, but the voice acting was the deciding factor in my main.

Because BW screwed up on mirror abilities, in small ways to favor Empire. For example, flash bang on Republic is 1 1/2 mins to recast, whereas for Empire its 1 minute. For mirror classes is it a good idea to pull something like that? And you see small changes like that all over favoring Empire over Republic.

It doesn't make sense that Bioware would do something so stupid, but all through Beta, one thing I learned: "if its obviously a bad idea to anyone who has played MMO's for 10+ years, Bioware is probably going to do it".

Look at Ilum w/ flipping it to get objectives. Everyone whose played an MMO would know that would be the ultimate output to maximize quests, and yet Bioware did it. Next, Bioware put in faction killing and gee they didn't test it well enough to figure out that the camps would get zerged. Cut to the fix, and they still aren't taking faction imbalance into account for Ilum.

Because of Huttball. When there are no Republic players to fight, Empire can fight themselves for points.

This might be a minor thing, but I think it's worth mentioning:

Light Side/Dark Side Points.

Dark Side Points are far easier and far more frequent to obtain than LS Points - even for Empire.

Why is this a big deal?

Relics. The DS ones are better and they are easier to get, sooner. Fits right into the min/max mentality.