Final answer:
The presented scenarios illustrate a voting cycle where no clear majority winner emerges due to cyclic preferences and a situation where a majority preference is not met due to vote splitting among similar options.
Step-by-step explanation:
The scenario described involves a voting cycle, also known as Condorcet's paradox, which demonstrates a situation where collective preferences can be cyclic even if the individual preferences are not. This means that when voting on options pairwise, no option is the overall winner.
In the provided example, mountain biking wins over canoeing, canoeing wins over the beach, but the beach wins over mountain biking, thus creating a loop with no clear winner. Additionally, the case with the Coca-Cola and Pepsi candidates indicates a scenario where vote splitting among multiple similar options leads to an outcome that does not reflect the majority's preference—this is sometimes referred to as the spoiler effect.