This should get what you want:
SimilarPost = aliased(Post)
SimilarPostOption = aliased(PostOption)
post_popularity = (db.session.query(func.count(SimilarPost.id))
.select_from(PostOption)
.filter(PostOption.post_id == Post.id)
.correlate(Post)
.outerjoin(SimilarPostOption, PostOption.val == SimilarPostOption.val)
.join(SimilarPost, sql.and_(
SimilarPost.id == SimilarPostOption.post_id,
SimilarPost.place_id == Post.place_id)
)
.as_scalar())
popular_post_id = (db.session.query(Post.id)
.filter(Post.place_id == Place.id)
.correlate(Place)
.order_by(post_popularity.desc())
.limit(1)
.as_scalar())
deduped_posts = (db.session.query(Post, post_popularity)
.join(Place)
.filter(Post.id == popular_post_id)
.order_by(post_popularity.desc(), Post.timestamp.desc())
.all())
, , , (MySQL JOIN LIMIT 1 , SQLAlchemy - WHERE, SQLAlchemy ). , , -, as_scalar , , Post .
FWIW, , user1675804 , SQLAlchemy , . , db python.