As a former Yanker that used to defend Linlin, who once believed that Shanks > Mihawk and whose favourite character is still Whitebeard, the Admiral and Mihawk crowds simply output far better arguments than any of the Yonko crowd I have come across.
Also, they are filled with far more interesting and charismatic personalities. The Admiral Fandom in particular is the most self aware major group in One Piece. Only the minor faction that is the few enlightened Mad Monks of Urouge are more self aware.
Meanwhile, the Yonko Fandom produced the only bloke that ever threatened to kill me..... as well as Syed...... and Oliver..... and TGM.... just to name a few, yikes.
As for the manga, the most that Oda has ever truly given to a concrete answer is Admirals=Yonko. He has always portrayed them on roughly the same level. That is actually what a lot of the Admiral Fandom believe too. Van made an excellent thread about it.
https://worstgen.alwaysdata.net/for...rs-of-the-marines-yonko-and-shichibukai.4234/
The other thing that is becoming more and more apparent as the series goes on is that Oda simply does not care about consistent power scaling. Some quick beauties include Apoo one shotting Base Luffy with a hakiless attack when Katakuri failed to do so in 54 hits and Paradise scrub Pell surviving a city obliterating nuke while New World veterans Pedro and Perospero die and almost die respectively from a few sticks of dynamite.
Eventually, the fandom in general is going to realise that trying to accurately power scale One Piece will be as futile as eating soup with a fork.
TouchΓ©.