Well as I said with position 20 having only around double the amount of MVests backing him but way more voters, what if your platform was in search of getting as many people to vote for you (not just the whales). I mean I know that a few whales with a few GV each is better than a couple hundred minnows with MVests, but minnows (1 MV to ~100 MV for my definition) and dolphins (101 MV to 500 MV) have tons of unrest in regards to many or all of the whales.
I mean if you got 4000 more votes for witness and using the sigma of steempower is ~1000 with a mean of ~100 (78 but rounded to nearest 100 for as its all an approximation, calculated on old data unfortunately) and giving an approximation of proportion would give you another ~7.5 GV in votes.
I will redo the calculations with current data to make sure it is correct... and even exclude anyone that has voted for you and anyone over a certain size if you want but idk. Maybe it wouldn't work and you are right but I like to be optimistic that us smaller folk could elect witnesses that will actually fight the good fight.