Political Trivia
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198 free Political trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
44 free political trivia questions with answers. Politics is more than one country's presidents. This political trivia quiz roams the world: where the words 'left' and 'right' come from, why a Massachusetts governor's name became a verb, which parliament is the oldest on Earth, who was the first woman ever elected prime minister, how many members sit on the UN Security Council, and which country fines you for not voting. There are questions on the leaders (Mandela, Thatcher, Merkel, Gorbachev, Wałęsa, Bhutto, Sirleaf), the systems (Westminster, ranked-choice voting, the secret ballot, coalitions), the scandals and turning points (Watergate, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Churchill's Iron Curtain), and the assemblies (Bundestag, Knesset, Storting, Althing). A handful touch the United States, but only a handful; if you want presidents, we have a separate quiz for that. Every stem is neutral and every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the people, institutions and events, with a source attached to each question.
30 of 198 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The political terms 'left' and 'right' come from the seating in which body?
The French National Assembly of 1789
In the French National Assembly of 1789, supporters of the king sat to the president's right and revolutionaries to his left, a seating split that named the political spectrum.
Q 02Which animal did the Boston Gazette liken Elbridge Gerry's twisted 1812 district to?
A salamander
The Boston Gazette likened a contorted district drawn to help Elbridge Gerry's party to a salamander, coining 'Gerry-mander' in 1812; Gerry lost the governorship that year anyway.
Q 03Which senator filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for 24 hours 18 minutes?
Strom Thurmond
Strom Thurmond spoke for 24 hours 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957, opening with the election laws of all 48 states; the bill passed anyway, and Cory Booker's 25-hour speech in 2025 finally outlasted him.
Q 04The Watergate scandal began with a 1972 break-in at the headquarters of which organisation?
The Democratic National Committee
Five burglars were caught inside the Democratic National Committee's offices at the Watergate complex in June 1972, after a security guard noticed tape holding door locks open and called the police.
Q 05Which US president is the only one to have resigned from office?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon resigned on 9 August 1974 rather than face near-certain impeachment over the Watergate cover-up; no other US president has resigned.
Q 06Which party did Nelson Mandela, freed in 1990 after 27 years in prison, lead to victory in 1994?
The African National Congress
The African National Congress, banned until 1990, won more than 60 percent of the vote in April 1994, South Africa's first election open to all races, and Mandela became president.
Q 07Which South African president released Mandela and later negotiated the end of apartheid with him?
F. W. de Klerk
F. W. de Klerk freed Mandela in February 1990 and negotiated the end of apartheid with him; the two shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize before Mandela won the 1994 election.
Q 08Before entering politics, Margaret Thatcher trained and briefly worked as what?
A research chemist
A research chemist for four years, Margaret Thatcher worked for a plastics firm and then for the food company J. Lyons; she later qualified as a barrister, specialising in tax, before entering Parliament.
Q 09Which 1978-79 wave of British strikes helped bring Thatcher to power in 1979?
The Winter of Discontent
The Winter of Discontent took its name from the opening line of Shakespeare's Richard III; rubbish piled up in Leicester Square, Liverpool's gravediggers walked out, and Labour lost the election that May.
Q 10Angela Merkel holds a doctorate in which field?
Quantum chemistry
Quantum chemistry was the subject of Angela Merkel's 1986 doctorate; she worked as a researcher in East Berlin until the Wall fell in 1989, then joined the democracy movement and became a government spokeswoman.
Q 11Who became the world's first woman prime minister, in Ceylon in 1960?
Sirimavo Bandaranaike
Sirimavo Bandaranaike took office in July 1960, a year after her husband, the prime minister, was assassinated; in 1994 her daughter, newly elected president, appointed her to a third spell in the job.
Q 12Which country elected the world's first female president in a democratic vote, in 1980?
Iceland
Iceland elected Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, a theatre director and divorced single mother, in June 1980; she says she would never have won without the 1975 strike in which most Icelandic women stopped work for a day.
Q 13Founded in 930, which legislature is often described as the oldest in the world?
Iceland's Althing
Q 21The 'Australian ballot', pioneered in Australia's colonies in 1856, refers to what democratic innovation?
Voting in secret
Voting in secret on a government-printed ballot began in Australia's colonies in 1856; American party workers had handed voters filled-out ballots until states, led by Massachusetts in 1888, copied it.
Q 22Which self-governing colony became the first to grant women the national vote, in 1893?
New Zealand
New Zealand granted women the vote on 19 September 1893 after Kate Sheppard's petition of nearly 32,000 signatures, about a quarter of the colony's adult European women.
Q 23Emmeline Pankhurst founded which militant British suffrage organisation in 1903?
Iceland's Althing first met at Thingvellir in 930, but it was abolished in 1800 and only restored in 1845, which lets the Isle of Man's Tynwald claim the longest unbroken run.
Q 14A Soviet boycott of which UN body enabled intervention in Korea?
Security Council
The Security Council has fifteen members, five of them permanent with a veto; the Soviet delegate was boycotting it over China's seat in June 1950, so no veto blocked the Korea resolutions.
Q 15Ostracism, a vote to banish a politician for ten years, was practised in which ancient Greek city?
Athens
Athens held the vote by having citizens scratch a name on a shard of pottery, an ostrakon; the man named most often had ten days to leave the city and stayed away for a decade.
Q 16How many single-member constituencies elect the UK House of Commons?
650
650 single-member constituencies each return one MP, yet the Commons chamber has room for only 427 of them, so members stand at either end of the House during big debates.
Q 17Who is regarded as the first British prime minister, taking office in 1721?
Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole led the government from 1721 to 1742, the longest run of any prime minister; the title was then a term of abuse, and in 1741 he flatly denied that he held it.
Q 18Which British prime minister served the shortest tenure, seven weeks?
Liz Truss
Liz Truss announced her resignation in October 2022, after her tax-cutting mini-budget set off financial turmoil; a tabloid's livestreamed lettuce, set up to see which would last longer, had not yet wilted.
Q 19In 1997 the new Labour government moved Prime Minister's Questions to a single weekly session on which day?
Wednesday
Wednesday got a single 30-minute session in 1997 in place of two 15-minute ones; the fixed slots dated from a 1961 experiment under Harold Macmillan, originally on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Q 20Instant-runoff (ranked-choice) voting is used to elect the lower house of which country's parliament?
Australia
Australia adopted preferential voting for its House of Representatives in 1918, after a split conservative vote handed Labor a safe seat at the Swan by-election; voters number the candidates in order.
The Women's Social and Political Union
The Women's Social and Political Union took the motto 'deeds, not words' and lived up to it: its members broke windows, defaced paintings and went on hunger strike in prison.
Q 24What botched event brought down the Berlin Wall?
Press conference
A press conference went wrong: asked when new travel rules would take effect, East German spokesman Günter Schabowski said 'immediately', and crowds overwhelmed the border guards within hours.
Q 25Which Soviet leader approved the Berlin Wall's construction in 1961?
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev gave East Germany's Walter Ulbricht the go-ahead, and the border was sealed overnight on 13 August 1961 to stop an exodus that had already taken millions of East Germans west.
Q 26Churchill gave his 1946 'iron curtain' speech in which US state, the home of President Truman?
Missouri
Missouri was President Truman's home state: he endorsed Westminster College's invitation and travelled to Fulton with Churchill, who spoke in the college gymnasium on 5 March 1946.
Q 27Which West Berlin mayor, later chancellor, stood beside Kennedy for his 1963 'Ich bin ein Berliner' speech?
Willy Brandt
Willy Brandt, mayor since 1957, hosted Kennedy at the city hall on 26 June 1963; the tale that the president's phrasing made him a 'jelly doughnut' is a legend that surfaced two decades later.
Q 28Which Cuban dictator did Fidel Castro's rebels overthrow at the start of 1959?
Fulgencio Batista
Fulgencio Batista fled to the Dominican Republic on 1 January 1959; his 1952 coup had cancelled an election in which Castro, then a young lawyer, was preparing to stand.
Q 29Robert Mugabe led which country from 1980 until his removal in 2017?
Zimbabwe
Robert Mugabe led Zimbabwe from independence in 1980 until the army put him under house arrest in November 2017; he resigned by letter as parliament began impeaching him.
Q 30Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa's first elected female head of state, led which country?
Liberia
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was president of Liberia from 2006 to 2018; the Harvard-trained economist had fled after Samuel Doe's 1980 coup and worked for Citibank before returning.