I can give you my view in relation to my local board (Spanish). There, the number of posters and the dynamics of the local board per-se is smallish. Therefore, it is relatively easy to stand-out, since there not too many daily posts to "compete against". Providing the posts have any decent content to it, being merited should not be an issue if, of course, someone with merits is actually roaming the area to award them.

Our local board has one or two merit sources that I’m aware of, although certainly not just focused on the local board, but that are rather active on the English boards in general. Besides them, not that many people have large sums of merit. If just taken a look, and over the last month, only 5 people have managed to award more than two merits there, to 40 different recipients.
The amounts awarded on my local board are often small: 84,30% of merited posts are merited by a single person, and the amount is seldom above 2 merits.

In summary: It´s not difficult to earn merits if you post decently, although you won’t get many, and due to there being few decent posters, the number of distinct recipients is not very large either (which in turn often leads to getting less merits due to a self-awareness of this fact when awarding merits).