Government Trivia
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164 free Government trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
53 free government trivia questions with answers. This government trivia quiz is a civics class in fifty questions. The American half covers the three branches and their checks and balances, the 535 members of Congress and their qualifications, the nine justices, the Electoral College and contingent elections, how amendments pass and how many there are, vetoes, filibusters, impeachment, the Cabinet, the line of succession, the designated survivor and the shutdown law nobody has heard of. The world half asks about the oldest legislature on Earth, the Westminster model and the first prime minister, the Knesset, the Bundestag and the Diet, the five UN veto powers, Switzerland's seven-headed head of state and the cantons that still vote by show of hands, Magna Carta, absolute monarchies and the longest constitution ever written. Easy questions suit students and citizenship-test candidates looking for civics trivia questions and answers; hard ones will stretch political junkies. Every answer has been checked against the encyclopaedia entry for each institution, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 164 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Splitting government into three branches is called what?
Separation of powers
Separation of powers: Montesquieu argued in 1748 that liberty is lost when one body both makes and enforces the laws, and Federalist 47 calls him 'the oracle who is always consulted' on the subject.
Q 02How many senators does each US state send to Washington?
Two
Two per state was the Great Compromise of 1787: small states got an equal voice in the Senate, while large states got seats in the other chamber in proportion to their population.
Q 03How many justices sit on the US Supreme Court?
Nine
Nine is set by law, not by the Constitution: Congress began with six justices in 1789 and changed the number six times before settling on nine in 1869.
Q 04How many electoral votes does a candidate need to win the US presidency?
270
270 is a bare majority of the 538 electors; if nobody reaches it, the House of Representatives picks the president with one vote per state delegation, as it last did in 1825.
Q 05The first ten amendments to the US Constitution are known collectively as what?
The Bill of Rights
The Bill of Rights: James Madison drafted them, Congress sent twelve articles to the states in 1789, and ten were ratified in 1791.
Q 06Which US official chairs the Senate and may vote only to break a tie?
The vice president
The vice president got the chair, Hamilton argued in Federalist 68, so that no state would lose a voting senator to it, and votes only on ties so that the chamber can always reach a decision.
Q 07Which amendment limits a US president to being elected twice?
The 22nd
The 22nd Amendment answered the only four-term presidency: Congress proposed it in 1947, two years after that presidency ended, turning George Washington's two-term custom into law.
Q 08Two-thirds of both houses of Congress can overturn which act of a US president?
A veto
A veto can be overridden by two-thirds of each chamber, but it rarely is: of roughly 2,600 vetoes since 1789, Congress has overturned fewer than one in twenty.
Q 09Who is second in the presidential line of succession?
The Speaker of the House
The Speaker of the House has ranked second since the Presidential Succession Act of 1947; Harry Truman pushed the change, arguing that an elected official should come before appointed Cabinet members.
Q 10Which 1803 Supreme Court case established the power of judicial review?
Marbury v. Madison
Marbury v. Madison: William Marbury sued for his undelivered commission as a justice of the peace and went without it, because John Marshall ruled that the law letting him sue in the Supreme Court was itself unconstitutional.
Q 11Which measures does the Constitution require to start in the House rather than the Senate?
Tax bills
Tax bills must begin in the House, a rule borrowed from Britain's House of Commons: the framers wanted the purse strings held by the chamber closest to the voters.
Q 12Which US Cabinet department, created in July 1789, is the oldest?
State
State came first: Congress created it in July 1789 as the Department of Foreign Affairs, weeks ahead of War and the Treasury, which is why its secretary leads the Cabinet in the line of succession.
Q 13British troops set fire to the US Capitol, where Congress meets, during which war?
The War of 1812
Q 21Which Senate procedure, normally needing 60 votes, is the way to cut off a filibuster?
Cloture
Cloture did not exist until 1917: before then senators could talk for as long as they liked, and even the new rule needed a two-thirds vote until the bar dropped to 60 votes in 1975.
Q 22Which senator filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for 24 hours and 18 minutes?
Strom Thurmond
Strom Thurmond of South Carolina spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes in August 1957, and the bill passed anyway; his mark for the longest Senate speech stood until Cory Booker spoke for 25 hours in 2025.
Q 23Who was the first US president to be impeached?
Andrew Johnson
The War of 1812: British troops set the Capitol alight on August 24, 1814, and only a sudden rainstorm kept the unfinished building from being destroyed completely.
Q 14US checks and balances are meant to keep which three institutions in line?
The executive, legislature and judiciary
The executive, legislature and judiciary each get tools to resist the other two, the design Federalist 51 sums up in one line: 'Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.'
Q 15Which amendment fell three states short of ratification in 1982?
Equal Rights Amendment
The Equal Rights Amendment had 35 of the 38 states it needed when time ran out; three more states ratified between 2017 and 2020, decades after the deadline, leaving its status disputed.
Q 16A constitutional amendment proposed by Congress normally needs approval from three-fourths of which bodies?
State legislatures
State legislatures do the ratifying, and the president has no part in it: an amendment never goes to the White House for signature, and 38 of the 50 states must agree.
Q 17Which New England state became the ninth to ratify the Constitution in 1788, putting it into effect?
New Hampshire
New Hampshire's vote on June 21, 1788 supplied the ninth ratification the Constitution needed; Congress then set the first federal elections for that winter and the new government began in 1789.
Q 18Which state refused to send delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention?
Rhode Island
Rhode Island boycotted the Philadelphia convention and then held out longest of all, becoming the last of the thirteen states to ratify on May 29, 1790, more than a year after the new government began.
Q 19The US House, long capped at 435 seats, briefly grew to 437 when which two states joined?
Alaska and Hawaii
Alaska and Hawaii each got one temporary seat on joining in 1959, lifting the House to 437 until the seats were reshuffled after the next census and the total fell back to 435.
Q 20Which future president was elected to the Senate at 29?
Joe Biden
Joe Biden won Delaware's seat in 1972 and turned 30, the Constitution's minimum, thirteen days after the election; the early Senate was laxer, seating John Eaton at 28 in 1818, apparently without asking his age.
Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868 chiefly for sacking War Secretary Edwin Stanton in defiance of the Tenure of Office Act; he survived his trial by a single vote.
Q 24Which charge was the single article in Donald Trump's second impeachment, in January 2021?
Incitement of insurrection
Incitement of insurrection was the lone article, adopted a week after the Capitol was stormed; the vote at his trial, 57 to 43 for conviction, fell ten short of the two-thirds required.
Q 25Who presides when a sitting US president is tried on impeachment charges?
The chief justice
The chief justice takes the chair only when a president is on trial; when judges or other officials are impeached, the chamber's usual presiding officer stays put.
Q 26Which president revived the practice of delivering the State of the Union in person, in 1913?
Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson went to Congress in person in 1913, reviving a habit that had lapsed for more than a century, and turned a written report into a platform for rallying support for his agenda.
Q 27What name is given to the Cabinet member who sits out the State of the Union address?
Designated survivor
Designated survivor: one Cabinet member stays away at a secure location so the line of succession outlasts a catastrophe, a Cold War habit whose choices were seldom made public before the 1980s.
Q 28As of the 2024 election, which two states could split their electoral votes rather than award them winner-take-all?
Maine and Nebraska
Maine and Nebraska give two electors to the statewide winner and one to the winner of each congressional district; Nebraska first split in 2008, when Omaha's district went to Barack Obama.
Q 29Which amendment barred denying Americans the vote on account of sex?
The 19th
The 19th Amendment was clinched in Tennessee when 24-year-old Harry Burn cast the deciding yes with a letter in his pocket from his mother urging him to vote for suffrage.
Q 30What was the first constitution of the United States, in force from 1781?
The Articles of Confederation
The Articles of Confederation, ratified on March 1, 1781, gave Congress no power to tax; their weakness prompted the 1787 convention that replaced them.