Elections - The Problems

January 7, 2008

With the start of 2008 comes a rash of caucuses and primaries to determine who each party will choose to run in the national presidential election.  In light of this, here are a few questions surrounding voting, percentages, etc.

On January 3rd, both the democratic and republican parties in Iowa saw a record number of voters turn out for the caucus.  In 2004, the Democratic Party had 124,000 at the caucus.  This year, the Democratic Party had a turn out of 227,000 voters. By what percent did this year’s democratic voter participation beat 2004 democratic voter participation? Express your answer to the nearest tenth.

In Mr. Hoolihan’s 8th grade Social Studies class, students are holding mock-elections to learn about our nation’s voting process. In this class exercise, only Vonda, Emma, Frank, and Bobby are running for the class republican bid for president. During the “primary vote” Vonda received 10% of the votes, Emma received 35% of the votes, Frank received 30% of the votes, and Bobby received the rest of the votes. If Bobby received 10 votes, what was the difference between the least number of votes received and the greatest number of votes received by the four candidates

After the “primary vote,” Vonda dropped out of the race. If Vonda had dropped out before the “primary vote,” what is the minimum percentage of Vonda’s votes that Frank would have had to receive in order to beat Emma in the primary vote?