Consider this simplified election scenario in which the major party candidates are M1 and M2, and a minor party (or independent) candidate is represented with a lowercase “m”. We’ll say for the moment that these expressions are completely honest.

% of voters Their ranking

49% M1 > others

41% M2 > others

10% m > M2 > M1

This examples shows that 49% of the voters favor M1 over all other candidates. The remainder votes are split between M2 and m. Note that we purposely ignore certain orderings, to make the example as simple as possible. One can easily construct more realistic/complicated examples if desired.