I see people saying Laurel won't be killed off because of her comic status just as much as I see people say Felicity won't be killed off because of her love interest/popularity status. Either death would be a shocker, neither will happen I believe.
So then who took her place as the most hated? Felicity? It isn't a surprise to me that she didn't get that much coverage, her storyline was to spoilerish to talk about and the writers have this weird obsession of having pairing all of her stories with Sara and Quentin. If they give her something new and exciting in 4b then things could totally change. In the end, I see people who didn't, like her warm to her others haven't. We got the next 5 months to see what happens.