Question

In an election between two candidates, the candidate who gets 30% of the votes polled is defeated by 15000 votes. What is the number of votes polled for the winning candidate?

Answer 1

Hint: In this question, we will assume total votes polled be x. Now, we calculate votes in terms of x for both the candidates. Here in the question it is given that the candidate who lost the election is defeated by 15000 votes. So, from here we can form an equation; the difference between the votes of both candidates is 15000. From this equation we will get the value of x. Then we will put the value of x to calculate the number of votes polled for the winning candidate.

Complete step-by-step answer:
Let the total votes polled be x.
Candidate who lost the election got 30% of votes = $\dfrac{{30x}}{{100}} = 0.3x$
Candidate who won the election got 70% of votes = $\dfrac{{70x}}{{100}} = 0.7x$
 According to the question;
0.7x – 0.3x = 15000
$ \Rightarrow $0.4x = 15000
$\therefore x = \dfrac{{15000}}{{0.4}}$= 37,500 votes.
Total votes polled in an election is 37,500 votes.

Number of votes polled for the winning candidate = 0.7x = 0.7 $ \times$ 37,500 = 26,250 votes

Note: In this question, we have to use the concept of percentage. A percentage is a number or ratio can be expressed as a fraction of 100. It means percent is a part of 100. It is represented by a symbol ‘%’. Percentage can be represented in decimal or fraction form, such as 0.6%, 0.25%, etc. In school when we obtain a mark in any subject then it is calculated in terms of percentage.