Question

In a straight student election, Rahul gets 66 % of the votes pulled. If the defeated students got 187 votes. Find the total number of votes pulled.

Answer 1

Now we know that the percentage always adds up to 100. We are given that Rahul got 66 percent votes hence the opponent must have got 100 – 66 % votes. Now we are given that the defeated person got 187 votes. Hence we can say if there are total x votes then 100 – 66 % of x is 187. Using this equation we will find x, which is our total number of votes.

Complete step-by-step answer :
Now we know there was a straight student election. Two candidates stood up for the election and Rahul won the election.
Now we are given that Rahul got 66 % of the votes.
Now we know that since 66 % > 50 % we know Rahul won the election.
This means the other candidate was defeated. Now we know the percentage always adds up to 100 %.
Let us assume the defeated student got x % votes. Now Rahul got 66 % votes, hence we have
66 % + x % = 100 %.
Now taking 66 to RHS we get.
x % = (100 – 66) %
x % = 34 %.
Hence the other candidate got 34 % votes.
Now we are given that the defeated candidate got a total of 187 votes.
Now let us say the total number of votes is y.
Then we have 34 % of y is 187.
Hence we can say that $\dfrac{34}{100}\times y=187$
Now taking the term $\dfrac{34}{100}$ on RHS we get
$y=187\times \dfrac{100}{34}$
$\begin{aligned} & \Rightarrow y=11\times \dfrac{100}{2} \\\ & \Rightarrow y=11\times 50 \\\ & \Rightarrow y=550. \\\ \end{aligned}$
Now we have taken y as a variable to represent the total number of votes.
Hence we can say that total number of votes is 550.

Note : Note that while taking percentage we have x % of y means $x\times \dfrac{y}{100}$ . percent always means divide by 100 so always keep this in mind while doing such sums and do not directly multiply for example $x\times y$ .