This is an interesting point when the question is "how do I build a Windows app?" and a decision needs to be made. React is definitely one of the options that some consider when this question arises.

I think you miss the more common reasoning though. This starts with "can we build a Windows app?" The answer to that was "no" for many more people until relatively recently. The .NET Framework wasn't as available by default until the second half of the 2000s which caused some Windows app devs to hold off beyond the performance reasons and WinForms vs WPF. Electron and React go hand-in-hand here as they made a (crappy) Windows app easy.

What I feel popularized this was the webview approach on mobile. In 2010, there were a ton of frameworks popping up for hybrid mobile development. This was carried forward to desktop although some of us had been embedding IE webviews much earlier. This let people say "yes" and it went from one thing to the next with diversions into React Native.