The poster didnt get that much steem becasue of his steem power. The poster got it for a couple reasons. The first thing that happened is a high steem power user saw and upvoted the post... The high power upvote earned it a lot of money, and also earned it status on the trending page. If the initial high power vote was big enough, it would keep it near the top of the trending page regardless.
That gets it more views, which gets it more votes, which continues to keep it at the top of the trending page.
thank you for clarification