Even if you’ve never seen “Election,” Alexander Payne’s 1999 comedy about high school politics run amok, you probably know something about Tracy Flick. She is, after all, a pop-culture archetype. In the 20 years since the movie, adapted from a novel by Tom Perrotta, was released to critical praise and disappointing ticket sales, Tracy’s name has become a synonym for relentless drive and obnoxious self-confidence. Her image — sending her hand skyward in class when she knows the answer, which is always; passing out cupcakes frosted with her own name; haranguing her schoolmates at Carver High to “Pick Flick” for student body president — has been immortalized in countless memes. Reese Witherspoon may have gone on to win an Oscar and run with the mean moms on “Big Little Lies,” but Tracy remains (along with Elle Woods from “Legally Blonde”) her defining role.

Even if you have seen “Election,” you may have trouble remembering the name of Tracy’s antagonist, the social studies teacher played by Matthew Broderick. “Jim McAllister” rings no particular pop-cultural bells. The guy is too bland, too ordinary in both his virtues and his shortcomings, to stand as an archetype of anything. He lingers in the collective memory as Tracy’s foil, a flawed fellow whose modest aspirations and pathetic lapses are all but obliterated by the locomotive of her ambition.

It’s not that anyone thinks of Mr. M — as his students call him — as the hero of the story. Just as Reese Witherspoon’s perkiness scores a few points in Tracy’s favor, so does Broderick’s affability make it hard to hate Jim. This was even truer in 1999, when we knew him primarily as Ferris Bueller, the voice of Simba in “The Lion King” and the kid who saved the world from nuclear destruction by playing tic-tac-toe with a computer. How can you not root for this guy, even if he makes some pretty outrageous mistakes?

That’s more or less how I remembered “Election” until I watched it again recently, and 20 years of accumulated criticism suggests that I’m not alone. Here I should issue a spoiler warning, both for readers who haven’t seen “Election” — who should stop reading and stream it right now — and for those who think they know what it’s all about: The movie has been persistently and egregiously misunderstood, and I count myself among the many admirers who got it wrong. Because somehow I didn’t remember — or didn’t see — what has been right there onscreen the whole time.