Ranking Finalists by Jury Ballots

Medium

The finalists of a contest are labelled with distinct uppercase English letters. Each judge hands in a ballot: a string listing every finalist from best to worst. The ballots are collected in the array ballots. The final standings work like this: whoever was placed first on more ballots ranks higher. If that is a tie, compare how many second places they got, then third places, and so on. If two finalists have equal counts for every place, the one whose letter comes earlier in the alphabet ranks higher. Return a string with the letters of all finalists in the order of the final standings.

Example 1

ballots=["PQR", "QPR", "PRQ"] → 'PQR'

P is first on two ballots, Q on one and R on none, so first places alone already give the order P, Q, R.

Example 2

ballots=["MN", "NM"] → 'MN'

M and N tie on every place, so the alphabet decides: M comes first.

Example 3

ballots=["KDA"] → 'KDA'

Constraints

1 ≤ len(ballots) ≤ 10⁵
1 ≤ len(ballots[i]) ≤ 26
All ballots have the same length
A ballot consists of uppercase English letters with no repeats
Every ballot contains the same set of letters

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Topics

Array Hash Table String Counting Sorting

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Input

ballots=["PQR", "QPR", "PRQ"]

Expected

'PQR'

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