Judging by the comments immediately after the election, the majority of Democrat and Republican voters were strongly opposed to Reform Party candidate Ventura moving into the Governor's mansion. In which case, he won not because the majority of voters chose him, but because plurality voting effectively thwarted the will of the people. Had the voters been able to vote in such a way that, if their preferred candidate were not going to win, their preference between the remaining two could be counted, the outcome could have been quite different. For instance, several countries, among them Australia, the Irish Republic, and Northern Ireland, use a system called single transferable vote. Introduced by Thomas Hare in England in the 1850s, this system takes account of the entire range of preferences each voter has for the candidates.
All electors rank all the candidates in order of preference.
When the votes are tallied, the candidates are first ranked based on the number of first-place votes each received. The candidate who comes out last is dropped from the list. Again, the candidate who comes out last is dropped from the list. With just three candidates, this leaves one candidate, who is declared the winner. In a contest with more than three candidates, the process is repeated one or more additional times until only one candidate remains, with that individual winning the election.