This is pretty much true on a per page basis, but advanced SEO becomes less of a page optimization campaign and more about strategziing such that the business has positive results regardless of the performance of individual words or pages.
Look at it this way: having an exact match means you're committing yourself to the search term, either by being first to it or by spending a lot of money to buy the domain from whomever was first. Either is likely to be a signal of quality. Near match, however, just means you had $8 to spare. (For similar reasons, cheap-domain.com or cheapdomain.biz do not receive any bonuses.)
Yes, generally speaking, who has more backlinks wins. But take into your consideration the following:
- PR of the page of the backlink. A backlink from a page with PR 5 is better than 20 backlinks from pages with PR 0
- However, PR is not the only matter. There is also domain authority. A page with PR0 on a site with high domain authority (like NYT) could still outrank a PR3 page.
- Anchor text of the backlink. Links like "Click here" or just a plain URL don't say a lot, in compare to "Security Camera" for example.
- Where the link is placed on the page also matters. A link at the top or in the article beats links in the comment areas or at the footer.
But it's also common for people to overlook what opportunities they still have for on-site optimization. Most people can continue to increase their rankings by focusing on the in-house stuff.
Assuming equal on-site optimisations, he with more backlinks wins.