I thought it was interesting that Perl was a more popular choice than Python with that particular audience

I'd have thought that would be a slam dunk in almost any community (except Python programmers; obviously more of them would vote for Python (go figure)). Perl is, among Very High Level Languages, the market leader and the canonical example of the genre. The other languages in this category (Python, PHP, even Ruby) all compare themselves to Perl, strive to be better than Perl in one way or another, and so on. Among third-generation languages, C probably holds this spot, but among VHLLs it's Perl.