5 general election maths questions

• Fun & Puzzles
• Puzzles
• 6-7 years old
• 8-9 years old

Here are 5 general election maths questions to give your children a taste of the big event - and a little maths practice.

Question 1

There are 650 MPs in the House of Commons. How many MPs does one party need to win the election?

Hint - to win the election you need to have more MPs than all the other parties put together.  This is called a "having a majority".

Question 2

Let's say the Conservative party and Labour party have 273 MPs each. How many MPs are they short of winning?

Hint - you'll need to use the answer to question 1 to find this - see the answers below if you're stuck

Question 3

If the results turned out to be very close, let's say: 

Who could the Conservative party join with to win the election?

Hint - of course it's not as simple as this some parties don't like each other and won't ever club together.

Question 4

Who could the Labour party join with to win the election?

Question 5

Out of the 650 MPs, 150 are women.  What fraction are women?

And the Answers . . .

Question 1

There are 650 MPs

The winning party needs half of them and an extra one. That's 325 + 1 = 326

Question 2

If the Conservatives (or Labour ) have 273 they will need a further  326 - 273 MPs.

They will need 53 more  MPs.

Question 3

If the Conservatives have 273 votes they will need to join with other parties to get the 53 MPs they need to win and form a Government

This could be:

Conservatives ( 273 ) + Scottish Nationalists ( 52) + Lib  Dems ( 28)  = 353 MPs

Question 4

Who could the Labour party join with in order to win a majority?

If Labour has 273 MPs they will need to join with other MPs to get the 53 MPs they need to win and form a Government.

This could be:

Labour (273) + Scottish Nationalists (52) + SDLP (3) =  328 MPs

Question 5

150 MP's are Women.

As a fraction this is:

Which is not enough!

Please note, our figures are completely made up for the purposes of practising maths! 

I'm Jane, Co-founder of Komodo, and mum. If you have any questions please get in touch.

About Komodo - Komodo is a fun and effective way to boost primary maths skills. Designed for 5 to 11 year olds to use in the home, Komodo uses a little and often approach to learning maths (15 minutes, 3 to 5 times per week) that fits into the busy routine. Komodo users develop fluency and confidence in maths - without keeping them at the screen for long.

Find out more about Komodo and how it helps thousands of children each year do better at maths - you can even try Komodo for free. 

And now we've got Komodo English too - check it out here.