Barack Obama Trivia
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116 free Barack Obama trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Barack Obama's story is unusually easy to turn into good trivia because so much of it is unexpected: a boy nicknamed Barry who spoke fluent Indonesian, a Columbia graduate who took a job organizing tenants in a Chicago housing project, the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review, a state senator who lost a congressional primary in 2000 and was president eight years later. This President Obama trivia quiz runs 116 questions across his whole life: family and schooling, the community-organizer and law-professor years, the 2004 keynote that made him famous, both elections, the big first-term laws, the bin Laden raid, Bo and Sunny, his Supreme Court picks, the Cuba and Iran deals, and the post-presidency of memoirs, Grammys, an Emmy and a Netflix production company. Early questions are easy; the last third will test genuine political junkies. Every answer is verified against Wikipedia's biography of Obama or the dedicated article on that event, with the exact supporting sentence quoted under each question.
30 of 116 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city was Barack Obama born?
Honolulu
Honolulu: two local newspapers printed Obama's birth notice in August 1961, records later cited against claims that he was born abroad.
Q 02A 2002 Obama speech opposed only which kind of war?
Dumb
Dumb: Obama spoke at an October 2002 Chicago rally against invading Iraq, and in 2008 he contrasted that stand with a rival's vote for the war.
Q 03His mother, Ann Dunham, was born in which state?
Kansas
Kansas: Ann Dunham was born in Wichita and met Obama's father when both were students at the University of Hawaii.
Q 04His father was a citizen of which African country?
Kenya
Kenya: Barack Obama Sr. departed for graduate study in 1962, then returned home to work as a government economist.
Q 05Barack Obama has said his father grew up herding which animals?
Goats
Goats: his father went from herding them as a village boy to a graduate degree and a career shaping his nation's economy.
Q 06At age six, Barack Obama went to live in which country, his stepfather's homeland?
Indonesia
Indonesia: Obama attended local schools in Jakarta from age six to ten, and his mother later returned there for anthropology fieldwork.
Q 07What nickname did Barack Obama go by as a boy?
Barry
Barry: Obama kept the nickname through high school, then dropped it and began using his given name, Barack.
Q 08In 1971, Barack Obama moved back to Hawaii to live with which relatives?
His maternal grandparents
His maternal grandparents: Stanley and Madelyn Dunham raised him from age ten so he could attend school in Hawaii while his mother worked abroad.
Q 09Which private Hawaiian school did Barack Obama attend on a scholarship from fifth grade until graduating in 1979?
Punahou School
Punahou School: Obama later wrote that as a teenager there he used alcohol and drugs to push questions of who he was out of his mind.
Q 10Barack Obama began his undergraduate studies in 1979 at which Los Angeles school?
Occidental College
Occidental College: Obama spent his freshman and sophomore years there before transferring east to finish his degree.
Q 11His first public speech, in February 1981, called for his college to do what?
Divest from South Africa
The anti-apartheid rally speech is recounted in his memoir; he was pulled offstage mid-sentence as a piece of theater.
Q 12Where did Barack Obama earn his bachelor's degree in political science in 1983?
Columbia University
Columbia University: Obama transferred there after two years at a Los Angeles college, and after graduating he moved to Chicago in 1985.
Q 13From 1985 to 1988, Barack Obama worked in Chicago in what job?
Community organizer
Q 21In 2000, Barack Obama lost a Democratic primary for the US House to which incumbent?
Bobby Rush
Bobby Rush: he cast Obama as an outsider to the district's Black neighborhoods and beat him by more than 2 to 1.
Q 22In which city did Barack Obama give the 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote that made his name?
Boston
Boston: Obama wrote the speech largely himself, and the Kerry campaign's edits kept most of his draft intact.
Q 23Which phrase from Barack Obama's 2004 convention keynote became the title of his 2006 book?
The Audacity of Hope
The Audacity of Hope: Obama borrowed the phrase from a sermon, and his 2006 book of that title became a national bestseller.
Community organizer: Obama worked for the church-funded Developing Communities Project, then went on to law school in 1988.
Q 14In July 2008, candidate Barack Obama drew a huge crowd to an outdoor speech in which European city?
Berlin
Berlin: speaking to about 200,000 people at the Victory Column, Obama called for renewed ties between the United States and its allies.
Q 15Barack Obama gained national attention in 1990 as the first Black president of what?
The Harvard Law Review
The Harvard Law Review: the publicity from his election brought Obama a publishing contract for a book about race relations.
Q 16What subject did Barack Obama teach at the University of Chicago Law School?
Constitutional law
Constitutional law: the school repeatedly invited Obama to join its full-time tenure-track faculty, but he declined.
Q 17Which voter-registration drive did Barack Obama direct in Illinois in 1992?
Project Vote
Project Vote: the 1992 drive was credited with helping elect Carol Moseley Braun to the US Senate that November.
Q 18Whose sermons prompted Obama's 2008 speech on race?
Jeremiah Wright
Jeremiah Wright: Obama denounced the remarks but refused to disown him, then resigned from Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ in May 2008.
Q 19What is the given first name of Barack Obama's younger daughter, known as Sasha?
Natasha
Natasha: Sasha Obama was born in 2001, and the family stayed in Washington after 2017 so she could finish high school.
Q 20Barack Obama was first elected to public office in 1996, winning a seat in which body?
The Illinois State Senate
The Illinois State Senate: Obama's challenges to rival candidates' nominating petitions knocked them off the ballot, leaving him alone in the Democratic primary.
Q 24Who was Barack Obama's main rival in the 2008 Democratic primary?
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton: she battled Obama from February into June 2008, then served as his secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.
Q 25Whom did Barack Obama defeat in the November 2008 general election?
John McCain
John McCain: Obama beat the Arizona senator 365 electoral votes to 173, after McCain chose Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.
Q 26Which park hosted Obama's 2008 victory speech?
Grant Park
Grant Park: forty years earlier, police had clashed there with protesters during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
Q 27Who administered the oath of office at Barack Obama's first inauguration in January 2009?
Chief Justice John Roberts
Chief Justice John Roberts: he misplaced the word 'faithfully', so he gave Obama the oath again the next day in the White House Map Room.
Q 28What was the first bill Barack Obama signed into law, on January 29, 2009?
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act: it lets the 180-day deadline for pay-discrimination suits restart with each unfair paycheck, after Ledbetter lost at the Supreme Court.
Q 29Which stimulus law did Obama sign in 2009?
The Recovery Act
The Recovery Act: not one House Republican and only three Republican senators voted for the stimulus package.
Q 30In December 2009, in which city did Barack Obama accept the Nobel Peace Prize?
Oslo
Oslo: Obama called his accomplishments slight beside laureates like King and Mandela, then argued that force is sometimes morally justified.