In 5E virtually every new player regardless of ability score generation tends to match up their main racial bonus with their class.
This means unless your race has a plus 2 whatever orcare the variant human you will never see a Dwarf Wizard for example.
Back in AD&D you had racial restrictions and ability score negatives but you would often see races in classes where they lacked a relevent bonus. Probably due to multclass rules and racial packages.
Just something I have noticed. You can usually have a decent guess at a players class by their race.
Umm... You have never seen a Dwarf Wizard?...
You have seen less Dwarf Wizards than in AD&D?...
First, Dwarfs get a Constitution bonus which is nice to have if you are a Wizard. Furthermore they are the only race that grants you access to medium armor proficiency-- which is super nice to have if you are a Wizard. Their lack of intelligence bonus literally does not matter at all if you simply avoid the spells that have DCs that the target can make a save against. Avoid those spells and it hardly matters if your Wizard has an Intelligence score of 8.
Furthermore, the Proficiency bonus that one has when swinging the Dwarf's axe is the same as the Fighter's. Which means, so long as you don't tank your Intelligence score, up until the usual fighting classes get multiattack, so long as you don't tank your Strength score and instead take advantage of the fact that the Dwarf is the ONLY race in the game to get a +2 to two stats, means you are going to be hitting only slightly often and slightly less hard with your axes as the fighting classes are.
The Dwarf is probably one of the best races to be if one is going to play a Wizard in 5E and people noticed that almost immediately after the racial stats were put out.
Second, you literally could NOT play a Dwarf Wizard in AD&D. In fact, the only thing you were allowed to be as a Dwarf in AD&D is a Fighter or a Rogue-- and they both had hard level caps meaning you just became useless once the adventure level got too high. And the Rogue level cap was super, super low-- like level 6 or 8. There might have been an option for Cleric for the Dwarf in the final version of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, but I am not even sure about that.
So you are claiming that the edition where Dwarfs can be one of the most potent races to pair with the Wizard class has less people playing Dwarf Wizards than an edition where the book literally forbade you from playing a Dwarf Wizard?
Is this some sort of Mendella Effect thing? Did you step out of a parallel world where everything is completely backwards?