You rank 1) Indian 2) Chinese and 3) Italian
Your partner ranks 1) Gastropub 2) Chinese and 3) Steakhouse
you're going to get Chinese food, not because it exists on a line between each of your first choices, but because it is acceptable to each of you, if not preferred. It is a compromise by definition.
Chinese food isn't a compromise, a blend between Italian, Indian, Gatropub and Steakhouse food.
In Chinese food there isn't a little bit from every other choices. A candidate being chosen on virtue of a compromise by the numbers doesn't mean s/he aggregates some ideas from other candidates.
Hence my remark about that candidate being on a different spectrum from the others.
I am not saying he shouldn't be chosen or that people wouldn't be happy about it, I am saying that his ideas aren't a compromise from the other candidates' ideas.
How many axes can you chart a poltician's positions on?
Authoritarian<>Libertarian
Traditional Values <> Social Relational Values
Survival Values<>Self Expression Values
Interventionalist <> isolationist
That's just a few from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum
Say in the US 2016 election Sanders had run as a 3rd party. He was a liberal populist. He might well have been the second choice of both the Trump and Clinton voters, despite not being positioned between the two. He'd still have been the compromise candidate.
So let's talk 2016 presidential election
I'd imagine that a Trump Voter's ballot would look like the following if Sanders had run as an independent.
1) Trump 2) Sanders 3) Gary Johnson (Maybe with a flip on 2/3)
Clinton voters would be
1) Clinton 2) Sanders
Neither primary choice would be acceptable to the other. There would be some voters who preferred Sanders first.