U.S. Presidential Elections Quiz

Question: Which president coined the term "bully pulpit" to describe the presidency?

Answer: Theodore Roosevelt, 26th president of the United States (1901–09), invented the term “bully pulpit” to describe his view of the presidency. He used his office to speak out on important issues to shape public opinion.

Question: In 1984 President Ronald Reagan won every state except one. Which one did he lose?

Answer: Minnesota was the home state of Reagan’s opponent, Walter Mondale.

Question: In which year was radio broadcasting used for the first time for a presidential campaign?

Answer: The United States presidential election of 1924, campaign was notable for its use of radio broadcasting of the political conventions and party advertisements. The rising art of photojournalism was also employed to record campaign actions. American presidential election in 1924, in which Republican Calvin Coolidge won 54 percent of the popular vote and received more electoral votes, 382 and defeated Democrat John W. Davis. Running as the Progressive Party candidate, Robert M. La Follette captured some one-sixth of the popular vote.

Question: Which election marked the emergence of the political party system in the United States?

Answer: United States presidential election of 1796, the American presidential election held in 1796, in which Federalist John Adams defeated Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson. The election of 1796 marked the emergence of the political party system in the United States. In the previous elections of 1789 and 1792, George Washington won unanimous support with no party affiliation, but, throughout his presidency, a strong political divide had formed around the fiscal policy of Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton and others who favored a loose interpretation of the Constitution and a strong central government formed the Federalist Party in 1791. Jefferson formed his party, later to become known as the Democratic-Republican Party.

Question: Which of these U.S. presidents was elected by the House of Representatives?

Answer: John Quincy Adams, sixth president of the United States. In the United States presidential election of 1824, he was elected by the House of Representatives after Andrew Jackson won the most popular and electoral votes but failed to receive a majority. Jackson received 99 electoral votes, Adams captured 84 electoral votes, Crawford picking up 41 electoral votes, and Clay 37, no candidate received a majority, however, and the House of Representatives would therefore choose among the top three leading candidates, as dictated by the Twelfth Amendment. On Feb. 9, 1825, Adams was elected president by the House of Representatives on the first ballot, winning 13 states to Jackson’s 7 and Crawford’s 4.

Question: The oldest opposition political party in the United States was:

Answer: The Democratic-Republican Party, was the first opposition political party in the United States. Organized in 1792 as the Republican Party, its members held power nationally between 1801 and 1825. It was the direct antecedent of the present Democratic Party. During Jackson’s presidency, they dropped the Republican label and called themselves simply Democrats or Jacksonian Democrats. The name Democratic Party was formally adopted in 1844.

Question: Which presidential candidate conducted the first “front-porch” campaign?

Answer: In the United States presidential election of 1880, James A. Garfield, a Republican presidential nominee conducted the first “front-porch” campaign, from his home in Mentor, Ohio, where reporters and voters went to hear him speak. On election day Republican James A. Garfield triumphed with 214 electoral votes to Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock’s 155.

Question: What was the presidential campaign slogan of Warren Harding?

Answer: “Return to normalcy” was the central campaign slogan of Republican nominee Warren G. Harding’s successful campaign for the presidency of the United States in 1920. Harding’s slogan and platform, calling for disengagement from foreign intervention and for a return to business as usual, were offered as an antidote for the widespread sense of upheaval among Americans following World War I.

Question: Which amendment of the United States Constitution limits the serving of a president to two terms?

Answer: The Twenty-second Amendment (1951) to the Constitution of the United States effectively limits to two number of terms a president of the United States may serve. It was one of 273 recommendations to the U.S. Congress by the Hoover Commission, created by President Harry S. Truman, to reorganize and reform the federal government. It was formally proposed by the U.S. Congress on March 24, 1947, and was ratified on Feb. 27, 1951.

Question: Who won the 1840 election with the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too”?

Answer: The nickname “Tippecanoe” derives from the Battle of Tippecanoe, an engagement during the War of 1812 in which William Henry Harrison led the United States to victory. The battle made him a national hero. A month after his presidential inauguration, Harrison died and was succeeded by his vice president, John Tyler.

Question: The only U.S. president who served both as president and vice president without being elected was:

Answer: Gerald Ford, 38th president of the United States from 1974–77, succeeded to the presidency on the resignation of President Richard Nixon, under the process decreed by the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution, and become the only chief executive who had not been elected either president or vice president.

Question: In the United States presidential election of 1968, who was the running mate of presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon?

Answer: Spiro Agnew, 39th vice president of the United States in the Republican administration of President Richard M. Nixon. He was the second person to resign from the nation’s second-highest office and the first to resign under duress. Although he was little known to the American public at the time of his nomination for the vice presidency in 1968, Agnew won national recognition for speeches in which he denounced Vietnam War protesters and other opponents of the Nixon administration.

Question: In which presidential election campaign were Democratic contenders addressed as "The Seven Dwarfs" by commentators?

Answer: United States presidential election of 1988, the American presidential election held on Nov. 8, 1988, in which Republican George Bush defeated Democrat Michael Dukakis. The 1988 campaign featured an open contest on both the Republican and Democratic sides, as Republican President Ronald Reagan was entering the last year of his second term. Numerous contenders on the Democratic side entered the race. Commentators referred derisively to them as “The Seven Dwarfs.” They included Bruce Babbitt, Joe Biden, Michael Dukakis, Richard Gephardt, Al Gore, Jesse Jackson, and Paul Simon.

Question: Which presidential candidate delivered the “Cross of Gold” speech?

Answer: William Jennings Bryan was a Democratic and Populist leader and a magnetic orator who ran unsuccessfully three times for the U.S. presidency (1896, 1900, and 1908). At the Democratic convention in Chicago, Bryan gave his famous “Cross of Gold” speech (July 8) that won him the nomination at the age of 36.

Question: The moving up of presidential primaries and caucuses by states is known as:

Answer: Front-loading, in U.S. politics, is the moving up of presidential primaries and caucuses by states, thereby increasing their influence in the selection of a party’s candidate. As a result, presidential nominees are often determined early in the election year. The “front-loading” of primaries and caucuses continued during the 1990s, prompting Iowa and New Hampshire to schedule their contests even earlier, in January, and causing the Democratic Party to adopt rules to protect the privileged status of the two states.

Question: How many states did Ronald Reagan win against Walter Mondale in the United States presidential election of 1984?

Answer: The United States presidential election of 1984 was held on November 6, 1984. Republican Ronald Reagan was elected to a second term, defeating Democrat Walter Mondale, a former U.S. vice president. Reagan won 49 states en route to amassing 525 electoral votes to Mondale’s 13, one of the biggest landslides in U.S. election history. The election was also notable for being the first time a major party had a woman on its ticket, Geraldine Ferraro, Mondale’s running mate.

Question: Since the 1840s, on which day of the week have U.S. presidential elections been held?

Answer: Until the mid-19th century, Election Day varied from state to state. An 1845 law set a single Election Day for the entire country: the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

Question: Who was the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms?

Answer: Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th president of the United States (1885–89 and 1893–97), is the only president ever to serve two discontinuous terms. Cleveland distinguished himself as one of the few honest and principled politicians of the Gilded Age.

Question: Which U.S. state traditionally holds the first presidential primary election?

Answer: A primary election in the United States is an election to select candidates to run for public office. Primaries may be closed (partisan) or open (nonpartisan). Attention from the news media has increased the importance of presidential primaries to the point where success, especially in New Hampshire, (which usually has held the first presidential primary) and in other early primaries—gives a candidate a great advantage in publicity and private campaign funding, whereas failure can end a campaign.

Question: This was once a dominant system for selecting candidates in the presidential nominating process:

Answer: A caucus is any political group or meeting that is organized for a special interest or cause. The word caucus originated in Boston in the early part of the 18th century, when it was used as the name of a political club, the Caucus, or Caucus Club. The term came to denote a meeting of either party managers or duty voters, as in “nominating caucus,” which nominates candidates for office or selects delegates for a nominating convention. The caucus of a party’s members in Congress nominated its candidates for the office of president and vice president from 1796 until 1824.

Question: Who assumed the presidency after the death of President Warren G. Harding?

Answer: Calvin Coolidge, 30th president of the United States (1923–29), acceded to the presidency after the death in office of Warren G. Harding, just as the Harding scandals were coming to light. He restored integrity to the executive branch of the federal government while continuing the conservative pro-business policies of his predecessor.

Question: Which president chose as his running mate Kamala Harris, who would become the first woman to serve as U.S. vice president?

Answer: In August 2020 Joe Biden chose Kamala Harris as his running mate—she became the first Black woman to appear on a major party’s national ticket. When Biden and Harris won in the general election, she became the first woman to serve as U.S. vice president.

Question: Which president won his second term as president by capturing 286 of 366 electoral votes in 1872?

Answer: Ulysses S. Grant was a U.S. general, commander of the Union armies during the late years of the American Civil War, and 18th president of the United States. In the U.S. presidential election 1872, he was re-elected, defeating Horace Greeley, the candidate for the coalition formed by Democrats and Liberal Republicans, by nearly 800,000 votes in the popular election and capturing 286 of 366 electoral votes.

Question: In which year did George Washington win a unanimous second term as president of the United States?

Answer: United States presidential election of 1792, which took place in 1792, George Washington unanimously won a second term as president of the United States. He received a maximum of 132 electoral votes and was re-elected as president. The successful execution of a second democratic election in the United States helped legitimize the institution of the American presidency.

Question: Which presidential campaign was referred to as the "New Freedom agenda"?

Answer: Woodrow Wilson was the 28th president of the United States. During the 1912 presidential campaign, Wilson formulated the New Freedom agenda, pledging to restore unfettered opportunity for individual action and to employ the power of government on behalf of social justice for all.

Question: The first U.S. president from the west of the Appalachians was:

Answer: Andrew Jackson was a military hero and the seventh president of the United States (1829–1837). He was the first U.S. president to come from the area west of the Appalachians and the first to hold office by a direct appeal to the mass of voters. His political movement is called Jacksonian Democracy.

Question: The first presidential candidate from America's first third party, the Anti-Masonic Party, was:

Answer: The Anti-Masonic Party was the outcome of the Anti-Masonic Movement. The Anti-Masonic Party was the first American third political party to hold a national nominating convention and the first to offer the electorate a platform of party principles. In September 1831, the Anti-Masonic Party held a national convention in Baltimore, Maryland, nominated William Wirt for president, Wirt won only the state of Vermont (seven electoral votes) in the 1832 election, and the party went into decline after that.

Question: What was Franklin D. Roosevelt's economic program during his presidential campaign?

Answer: The Great Depression was the only issue of consequence in the United States presidential campaign of 1932. The American public had to choose between the unsuccessful policies of the incumbent Herbert Hoover, who blamed the depression on external events and alleged that Franklin D. Roosevelt would intensify the disaster, and the vaguely defined New Deal program presented by Roosevelt. In a series of addresses carefully prepared by a team of advisers popularly known as the Brain Trust, he promised aid to farmers, public development of electric power, a balanced budget, and government policing of irresponsible private economic power.

Question: Which third-party candidate in the U.S. presidential election secured the highest percentage vote in 1992?

Answer: United States presidential election of 1992, American presidential election held on November 3, 1992, Independent candidate Ross Perot secured nearly 19 percent of the vote—the highest percentage of any third-party candidate in a U.S. presidential election in 80 years. After the election, he organized the nonpartisan political pressure group United We Stand America.

Question: The system by which the president and vice president of the United States are chosen is:

Answer: Electoral college is the system by which the president and vice president of the United States are chosen. It was devised by the framers of the United States Constitution to provide a method of election that was feasible, desirable, and consistent with a republican form of government.

Question: How many times did Ross Perot run for the presidency?

Answer: Ross Perot was an American businessman and philanthropist who ran as an independent candidate for U.S. president in 1992 and 1996. In September 1995, Perot established the Reform Party, which he hoped to build into a major political party. He ran an independent presidential campaign in 1992 and a third-party campaign in 1996.

Question: Who was the only president to hold office by decision of an electoral commission?

Answer: Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th president of the United States (1877–81), brought post-Civil War Reconstruction to an end in the South was the only president to hold office by decision of the electoral commission of and Supreme Court justices appointed to rule on contested electoral ballots of the 1876 election.

Question: By what percentage did Richard Nixon win the United States presidential election of 1972 against George McGovern?

Answer: In the United States presidential election of 1972, which was held on November 7, 1972, Republican President Richard Nixon was elected to a second term, defeating Democrat George McGovern in one of the largest landslides in U.S. history. In the general election, McGovern became, as establishment Democrats had feared he would, a Goldwater of the Left. Nixon captured more than 60 percent of the national vote to 37.5 percent for McGovern. And only Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., kept McGovern from a total wipeout in the electoral college, which Nixon won 520–17.

Question: Who was the first U.S. president to be impeached twice?

Answer: Donald Trump was the 45th president of the United States and the first to be impeached twice, in 2019 and 2021. In 2019 Trump became only the third president in U.S. history, after Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998, to be impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives. He was also the first president to be impeached during his first term of office.

Question: The first woman to run for the presidency on a major party ticket in the United States was:

Answer: Hillary Clinton, American lawyer and politician who served as a U.S. senator and secretary of state in the administration of Pres. Barack Obama. She had served as the first lady during the administration of her husband, Bill Clinton, 42nd president of the United States. As the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in 2016, she became the first woman to top the presidential ticket of a major party in the United States

Question: According to an infamous Chicago Tribune headline, who defeated President Harry Truman in the 1948 election?

Answer: With polls predicting a win for Thomas Dewey, and a printers’ strike requiring the Tribune to go to press before the results were announced, the newspaper ran with the headline “Dewey Defeats Truman” for its first edition. The actual vote proved otherwise. In a memorable photograph, Harry Truman grins as he holds the paper aloft.

Question: Which U.S. presidential candidate was called “Napoleon of the stump” by his supporters?

Answer: In the United States presidential election of 1844, James K. Polk was called the "Napoleon of the stump" by his supporters because of his energetic campaign style that led him to secure victory. Polk served as the 11th president of the United States (1845–49).

Question: Who was the first U.S. president to resign from office?

Answer: Despite President Richard Nixon's resounding victory in the 1972 United States presidential election, his role in the Watergate scandal forced Nixon to resign in disgrace in the worst political scandal in the United States history. Faced with the near-certain prospect of impeachment by the House and conviction in the Senate, Nixon announced his resignation on the evening of August 8, 1974, effective at noon the next day. He was succeeded by Gerald Ford, whom he had appointed vice president in 1973. Nixon was pardoned by President Ford, on September 8, 1974.

Question: What term, popularized after the 2000 election, describes an incompletely punched hole in a paper ballot?

Answer: The peculiarities of ballot design and tabulation were widely scrutinized in the aftermath of the 2000 election, when the vote in Florida was so close that a recount was held.  

Question: Who was the only president to get elected four times to the office?

Answer: Franklin D. Roosevelt was the 32nd president of the United States from 1933–45. The only president elected to the office four times, Roosevelt led the United States through two of the greatest crises of the 20th century: the Great Depression and World War II. In so doing, he greatly expanded the powers of the federal government through a series of programs and reforms known as the New Deal, and he served as the principal architect of the successful effort to rid the world of German National Socialism and Japanese militarism.

Question: Which candidate won the popular vote in 1876?

Answer: Although Samuel J. Tilden won nearly 300,000 more votes, the election was won by Rutherford B. Hayes, who prevailed in the electoral college.

Question: Which amendment separated electoral college votes for president and vice president?

Answer: The electoral college is the system by which the president and vice president of the United States are chosen. It was devised by the framers of the United States Constitution to provide a method of election that was feasible, desirable, and consistent with a republican form of government. The election of Thomas Jefferson after 36 ballots led to the adoption of the Twelfth Amendment in 1804, which specified separate ballots for president and vice president and reduced the number of candidates from which the House could choose from five to three.

Question: Which U.S. president is known as the "Father of the Constitution"?

Answer: James Madison was the fourth president of the United States (1809–17) and one of the Founding Fathers. At the Constitutional Convention (1787), he influenced the planning and ratification of the U.S. Constitution and collaborated with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay in the publication of the Federalist papers. Madison furnished the basic framework and guiding principles of the Constitution, earning him the title “Father of the Constitution.”

Question: The first Greek American to be nominated for the presidency was:

Answer: Michael Dukakis, an American politician and lawyer, was the Democratic Party’s nominee for the United States presidential election of 1988. In April 1987, Dukakis declared his candidacy for the presidency and went on to become the first Greek American nominated for the presidency. He emerged as the most popular candidate in the 1988 Democratic primaries and won his party’s nomination for president. But he lost the November 1988 presidential election to the Republican candidate, George Bush.

Question: What is the Democratic Party's symbol that was popularized by cartoonist Thomas Nast?

Answer: The Democratic Party is the oldest political party in the United States and among the oldest political parties in the world. The symbol of the Democratic Party, the donkey, was popularized by cartoonist Thomas Nast in the 1870s; though widely used, it has never adopted by the party officially.

Question: The first president to achieve a popular majority since the 1872 U.S. presidential election was:

Answer: The central issue of the presidential campaign of 1896 was the nation’s money supply. William McKinley ran on a Republican platform emphasizing maintenance of the gold standard, while his opponent—William Jennings Bryan, candidate of both the Democratic and Populist parties—called for a bimetallic standard of gold and silver. McKinley won the election decisively, becoming the first president to achieve a popular majority since 1872 and bettering Bryan 271 to 176 in the electoral vote.

Question: Millard Fillmore ran for president in 1856 as a candidate for which party?

Answer: Millard Fillmore was the presidential candidate of Know-Nothing party in the 1856 election finishing third behind Democrat James Buchanan and Republican John C. Frémont.

Question: After he left the White House, President Theodore Roosevelt stood for election in 1912 as the candidate of what party?

Answer: Formally known as the Progressive Party, the Bull Moose Party was organized as a reaction against the conservative policies of Republican President William Howard Taft. Theodore Roosevelt, who survived an assassination attempt during the campaign, went on to earn more electoral votes than Taft, though the election was ultimately won by the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson.

Question: When was the last time a third-party candidate won any electoral votes?

Answer: George Wallace won five Southern states (for a total of 46 electoral votes) as the firebrand candidate of the antiliberal American Independent Party. Although Ross Perot in 1992 won a greater share of the popular vote than Wallace did in 1968, Perot failed to pick up a single state.

Question: When were the U.S. presidential debates first televised?

Answer: In United States presidential election of 1960, Democrat John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated Republican Vice President Richard M. Nixon by a margin of less than 120,000 out of some 70,000,000 votes cast. A major factor in the campaign was a unique series of four televised debates between the two men. An estimated 85–120 million Americans watched one or more of the debates. Both men showed a firm grasp of the issues, but Kennedy’s poise in front of the camera, his Harvard accent, and his good looks convinced many viewers that he had won the debate.

Question: Which presidential candidate holds the record for the most second-place finishes?  

Answer: William Jennings Bryan was the Democratic nominee in 1896, 1900, and 1908. An ambitious politician and a popular public speaker, he nevertheless failed to become president. He later served as secretary of state under Woodrow Wilson.

Question: The New Frontier program is associated with which U.S. president?

Answer: John F. Kennedy, president of the United States from 1961–63, faced many foreign crises, especially in Cuba and Berlin, but managed to secure such achievements as the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the Alliance for Progress. In January 1960 Kennedy formally announced his presidential candidacy. Nominated on the first ballot, he balanced the Democratic ticket by choosing Johnson as his running mate. In his acceptance speech, Kennedy declared, “We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier.” Thereafter the phrase New Frontier was associated with his presidential programs.

Question: The commission created by U.S. Congress to resolve the disputed presidential election of 1876 was called the:

Answer: The Electoral Commission was created by U.S. Congress in the year 1877 to resolve the disputed presidential election of 1876 between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden.

Question: Who became the first person since Benjamin Harrison to be elected president despite having lost the nationwide popular vote?

Answer: George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States, led his country’s response to the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001 and initiated the Iraq War in 2003. Narrowly winning the electoral college vote in 2000 over Vice President Al Gore in one of the closest and most-controversial elections in American history, Bush became the first person since Benjamin Harrison in 1888 to be elected president despite having lost the nationwide popular vote.

Question: Who was the first woman to run for the U.S. president?

Answer: Victoria Woodhull was an American social reformer who fought for many causes. When the National Radical Reformers broke away from the NWSA in 1872, Woodhull, who was by then an accomplished public speaker, was nominated for the presidency by the Equal Rights Party. She became the first woman to run for the U.S. presidency (1872).

Question: Who was George Washington’s running mate in 1789?

Answer: In the first presidential election, there were no formal political parties and therefore no party tickets. Each candidate ran by himself. The candidate with the most votes in the electoral college became president, and the runner-up became vice president. This changed with the passage of the Twelfth Amendment (1804), which required electors to vote for both a president and a vice president.

Question: Whom did George W. Bush defeat in the 2004 United States presidential election?

Answer: George W. Bush elected to a second term after defeating Democrat John Kerry, a U.S senator from Massachusetts and the Democratic Party’s nominee for the United States presidential election of 2004.

Question: Maine is one of two states that do not apportion their electoral votes in a “winner-takes-all” format. What is the other state?

Answer: While most states award all of their electoral votes to the winner of the statewide vote, Maine and Nebraska use a method in which the statewide winner receives two electoral votes and the winner of each congressional district receives an additional electoral vote. Nebraska split its votes in 2008 (four for John McCain, one for Barack Obama), and Maine split its votes in 2016 (three for Hillary Clinton, one for Donald Trump); both states split their votes in 2020 between Trump and Joe Biden.

Question: The famous campaign slogan “I like Ike!” is associated with which U.S. president?

Answer: Dwight D. Eisenhower was the 34th president of the United States (1953–61). “Ike,” as he was called, was a fun-loving youth who enjoyed sports but took only a moderate interest in his studies. During World War II, he served as supreme commander of the Allied forces in western Europe. People from a wide variety of backgrounds, impressed by his friendliness, humility, and persistent optimism, liked and trusted him. A phrase that later became one of the most famous campaign slogans in American history seemed to reflect the impression of everyone who met him: “I like Ike!”

Question: Who was the third-party candidate to run for the presidency while in prison?

Answer: Eugene V. Debs was a labour organizer and Socialist Party candidate for U.S. president five times between 1900 and 1920. In 1920 he received about 915,000 votes, the most votes he received in any presidential election. He was in prison at the time, serving a sentence for having criticized the U.S. government’s prosecution of persons charged with violation of the 1917 Espionage Act. He was released from prison by presidential order in 1921.

Question: In the United States presidential election of 1804, how many electoral votes did Thomas Jefferson secure to defeat Charles C. Pickney?

Answer: In the United States presidential election of 1804 Democratic-Republican incumbent Thomas Jefferson soundly defeated Federalist candidate Charles C. Pinckney with 162 electoral votes to 14.