Thread: I tried doing this 3 times already!!!

In a recent election, Abby received 46 more votes than Barbara. If a total of 480 votes were cast for the two candidates, find out how many votes each candidate received.

a) Write the equation you would use to solve this problem, using as the number of Barbara's electoral votes. __________

b) After solving the equation, how many votes did Barbara receive? ________

c) After solving the equation, how many votes did Abby receive? __________

What 2 equations did you initially write down from the given information?

Originally Posted by MarkFL2

What 2 equations did you initially write down from the given information?

B+46-b=480

Let be the number of votes for Abby, and be the number of votes for Barbara.

We are told "Abby received 46 more votes than Barbara" which gives us:



We are told "a total of 480 votes were cast for the two candidates" which gives us:



Substituting for from the first equation into the second gives us:



Now, you may solve for ...

Originally Posted by MarkFL2

Let be the number of votes for Abby, and be the number of votes for Barbara.

We are told "Abby received 46 more votes than Barbara" which gives us:



We are told "a total of 480 votes were cast for the two candidates" which gives us:



Substituting for from the first equation into the second gives us:



Now, you may solve for ...

b+46+b=480
-46 -46

b+b=434
2b/2 434/2

B=217

Correct, now you can use the original first equation to find a...