help with my query/count/max

[mikefrederick]

So I have this query, and basically for each departmentid I need to select the answerid that occurs the most times for that departmentid. Then, at the end I need to tally up how many times an answerid showed up (so if an answerid occurred the most for 2 different departmentid's then this would equal 2). How could I do this? Thanks ahead of time.

 

$query = "SELECT COUNT(*) as votecount, candidates.id as c_id, candidates.name as c_name,
                 departments.id as d_id, departments.name as d_name
          FROM newvotes
            JOIN candidates ON newvotes.answerid = candidates.id
            JOIN departments ON newvotes.departmentid = departments.id
          GROUP BY  candidates.id, departments.id
          ORDER BY departments.id";

[mikefrederick]

right now if i try to take the max votecount it will do the total max, instead of the max for each department.