Same link twice on the same page, which will be chosen?

Question

As far as I know, two links with the same URL don't hurt SEO, Google will only see and consider the first one, and SEO benefits will be passed only to this.

But what about, if I have two links, one with image and another with text (usual in article listing), which of these will be considered for SEO?

For example:

<a href="http://www.example.com/article1">
  <img src="imgurl" alt="MyAwesomeArticle"/>
</a>

<a href="http://www.example.com/article1">MyAwesomeArticle</a>

In this case, will be considered only the first one? (that of course, will be bad for SEO, because anchor text is better than alt attribute.) Or Google (and others) will be smart enough to pick the link with the highest value (the one with the anchor text)?

… or something like this will be better?

<a href="http://www.example.com/article1">
  <img src="imgurl" alt="MyAwesomeArticle"/>
  <span>MyAwesomeArticle</span>
</a>

Answer 1

It's common for same links to appear multiple times on a page and both Google and Bing have never penalised for it.

This is correct!

<!-- EXAMPLE #1 -->
<div class="container">
    <h2>
        <a href="#">Header Title</a>
    </h2>
    <a href="#">
        <img src="example.jpg" alt="example">
        <span>An example of some text</span>
    </a>
</div>

This is correct too!

<!-- EXAMPLE #2 -->
<a href="#">
    <h2>Header Title</h2>
    <img src="example.jpg" alt="example">
    <span>An example of some text</span>
</a> 

Both examples are treated the same by all search engines, so from SEO POV both are the same. Far a technical point of view, the least amount of code is normally a better practice to reduce page size.

Answer 2

It was tested here and the conclusion was that the first link count rule doesn't apply to the image links (with alt). More exclusions related to first link count rule are mentioned here.