The OP image shows Google prioritising the quoted search term, but also getting the similar meaning results

Quotes tell the search engine you want that or something like it, don't show stuff completely unlike it

Google has a "search tools" drop down menu (on mobile it's at the end of the list of images/shopping/news etc).
It's default set to "all results". I believe changing it to "verbatim" is closer to the older (some would say "dumber", I would say "more predictable") behaviour

I think google still listens to the quote operator first, but if that would return no results, it then returns the results without the quotes.

That seems to be what I've seen from my experience, anyway.