1. The problem involves analyzing voting preferences for five types of food: Italian, Mexican, Thai, Chinese, and Indian, based on rankings and number of ballots. 2. Each food type has rankings from 1 to 5 across five columns, with the number of ballots for each column given as 133, 130, 125, 120, and 118 respectively. 3. To compare two food types, say A and B, we count how many ballots rank A higher than B. 4. For example, to compare Italian (A) vs Mexican (B), we look at each column and determine if Italian's ranking is better (lower number) than Mexican's ranking. 5. The rankings for Italian are: 2, 5, 1, 4, 3 and for Mexican: 1, 4, 5, 2, 1. 6. Compare column by column: - Column 1: Italian 2 vs Mexican 1 → Mexican preferred - Column 2: Italian 5 vs Mexican 4 → Mexican preferred - Column 3: Italian 1 vs Mexican 5 → Italian preferred - Column 4: Italian 4 vs Mexican 2 → Mexican preferred - Column 5: Italian 3 vs Mexican 1 → Mexican preferred 7. Now sum the ballots where Italian is preferred: only column 3 with 125 ballots. 8. Sum the ballots where Mexican is preferred: columns 1, 2, 4, 5 → 133 + 130 + 120 + 118 = 501 ballots. 9. Therefore, Mexican is preferred over Italian by 501 ballots, and Italian is preferred over Mexican by 125 ballots. 10. This method can be applied to compare any two food types using their rankings and the number of ballots. Final answer: Italian is preferred over Mexican by 125 ballots.