How to Make a Political Quiz

We’ve shared a lot about using quizzes for education, social media, LinkedIn, weddings, careers, and even beer. But today is different. We’re here to talk about political quizzes and how you can use them to drive leads for your email marketing campaign.

Okay, we know politics is a subject that often gets a lot of people riled up. “Quizzes for politics? No way!”

Let’s take a step back and think about it differently:

A political quiz is beneficial in many situations. You can use one to build an email list for your election campaign, educate others about politics, or even share with friends just for fun.

Ever take a “What political party am I?” quiz? We’re sure it’ll make you laugh.  

Today we’ll cover everything you need to make a political alignment quiz that will excite your target audience.

We’ll talk about:

Ready? Let’s do it. 

Create a quiz CTA

Why do political quizzes work for lead generation?

Online quizzes have been around for years. And now, as evidenced in the list below, quizzes are having a viral moment as several businesses and organizations use them to educate and engage target audiences. 

And we all know quizzes are great for gathering qualified leads

Look at these examples:

  • Buzzfeed pioneered interactive quizzes in a story format. The content team has put online quizzes at the heart of its editorial strategy to enhance user experience. 
  • The New York Times’ “Dialect Quiz,” which guesses where people live in the United States based on how they pronounce certain words (like Mary, merry, and marry), beat out the newspaper’s articles, graphics, and video packages to become the most popular news content in 2013. 
  • Much research has been conducted to examine online news quizzes in general and their potential to engage audiences. 
  • According to the Content Marketing Institue, 70% of marketers say that interactive content is effective at converting site visitors. 
  • Kaye Putnam generated $100K in revenue from a quiz for her online courses. 
  • Well-designed quizzes add personalization to your email marketing and enhance content engagement. 

Online quizzes work. 

Now let’s talk about politics. 

The latest research published in the Journal of Information Technology & Politics discovered interesting findings on the benefits of online political quizzes

Here’s what the authors found:

Answering political quiz questions boosts people’s perception of their own political knowledge, and this, in turn, leads them to be more interested in political news, politics, and engaging in politics. […] the act of answering political quiz questions made people feel as if they were more politically knowledgeable—and that perception of knowledge was powerful enough to lead to greater interest in political news and politics. 

Plus, quizzes are even more effective because they are interactive. 

Evidence? 

According to a 2016 CMI survey, 81% of participants said interactive content grabs attention more effectively than static content.

And that doesn’t even mention the fact that quizzes are super fun!

GIF of actor looking excited

Real-life applications of political party quizzes

A political quiz can be useful for three different purposes. Here they are:

1. Newsjack the election for marketing

For those of you who aren’t familiar with newsjacking, it’s the practice of adding your thoughts and opinions into breaking news stories to boost SEO for your website and attract attention from a wider audience. 

The key to newsjacking is picking the right story. And right now, nothing is better than the American presidential election. 

Wherever you turn, someone is talking about the upcoming election. Numerous political TV ads and election-related content on YouTube have been made, and every news outlet is reporting on the election—particularly the presidential debates.

News about the election is in every corner of the internet. It makes sense to use this to your advantage by producing creative content to promote your own causes. 

Exactly how?

By using political quizzes. 

Just google “political quizzes,” and you’ll receive about 671 million results in under 0.5 seconds. 

Google results for political quizzes

The opportunity is huge. 

By newsjacking the election with a political party quiz, you can:

  • Improve SEO for your website by giving relevant keywords and phrases to rank.
  • Drive leads to your email list.
  • Place your brand in the middle of larger industry and social conversations.
  • Boost social media engagement.
  • Demonstrate the nature of your brand to audiences, especially if you’re running a politics-related website/business. 
  • Show that you’re dialed into the needs of your customers and community. 

The best part is political quizzes allow you to free your creativity and make something different. Remember, producing the same content as everyone else won’t get you noticed; injecting your angle into the story based on what you know about your audience with a quiz will. 

2. Educate people about political matters

Fact: Many of us hate politics

It’s boring, complicated, and hard to understand. We study politics just because we feel forced out by a professional political class, not because we find it fascinating. 

But politics is important.

So, how can teachers engage students to study politics?

With political quizzes. 

The New York Times even publishes a series of “Weekly News Quizzes for Students.” Studying politics has never been more fun.   

question from a political quiz

3. Drive leads for political email marketing campaigns 

In a democracy, politicians need to present their stance on matters to the public to boost their standing and (hopefully) get elected. 

But, just like your customers, voters prefer the opinions of their peers. They also want to have a close relationship with the person they’ll vote for. 

Understanding that, campaign runners implement several marketing strategies to meet that demand, ranging from email marketing to celebrity endorsements. 

Need proof?

President Barack Obama has been noted as one of the most “connected” politicians of his age. He used online forums like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Podcasts, Reddit, and more to raise awareness about his campaign. 

The president’s team took their email marketing efforts to the next level with personalized landing pages and attention-grabbing subject lines. His team even created a slash page pop-up to encourage supporters to join the president’s email list. 

And in case you don’t know: much of the $690 million that the Obama campaign raised in 2016 was by implementing email marketing. 

Since then, email marketing has transformed political marketing campaigns. More and more politicians use emails to:

  • Connect with potential voters
  • Raise contributions/ask for donations
  • Send campaign updates
  • Communicate stances on issues
  • Invite supporters to local events
  • Gain votes
  • Maintain a long-term relationship with supporters for future campaigns

That leads to a problem: 

Many politicians focus on the quantity of recipients rather than the quality of their email list. 

They buy or hire leads from lead generation companies, which causes their email to be treated as spam by ISPs. As a result, their email marketing campaigns get poor deliverability and reach fewer potential voters. 

But smart politicians use a different way to grow their email lists.

They create political quizzes, give supporters some fun, and gradually lure them to subscribe. 

So now you understand how a great political quiz can unlock literally thousands of leads and sales for your business and teach you about your audience.

create your own quiz

Let’s move on to discover how you can create and use these quizzes in real life. 

Types of political affiliation quizzes with examples

For a quiz to work, you need to use the right type of quiz. Here are some types of political quizzes you can try: 

1. Personality quiz

A personality quiz is an engaging quiz that helps quiz-takers learn something about themselves. It’s the most shared and clicked-on type of quiz. 

Marketers have been using personality quizzes to increase traffic, generate leads, and connect customers to their brand. 

It could be a more serious personality quiz like “What’s Your Political Personality Type?”… 

political quiz question
Source: NewseumED

…or a simple, fun one like “What Percent Trump Are You?”

What percent Trump are you quiz cover
Source: How Stuff Works

2. Trivia quiz

If you want to test quiz-takers’ political knowledge, consider trivia quizzes

With a trivia quiz, each question has a correct answer. You can use a mix of questions to make a quiz that isn’t too hard or too easy. Using Interact, you can even show an explanation of why an answer is correct or not. 

Below is an excellent example from the European Union. They created the quiz “Europe in the World online” to test visitors on how much they know about the EU. Visitors who answer all 70 questions correctly will receive an EU Fan level digital badge!

EU quiz cover

At the end of the quiz, the EU provides additional information to help visitors learn more about each answer.  

EU quiz question with correct answer

Another example from Pew Research Center:

Political typology quiz question

While a trivia quiz is very effective at driving brand awareness and helping quiz-takers better understand a problem, it may have lower conversions if your quiz isn’t well-designed or if it includes too many (challenging) questions. 

3. Buzzfeed-style quiz

Buzzfeed-style quizzes are some of the most popular quizzes. They’re often nonsensical but fun and entertaining. 

A Buzzfeed-style political quiz can be useful if you want to drive traffic to your website or collect more emails from potential supporters. 

Here is an example from the Foundation for Economic Education. They used Interact to create a quiz called “Can We Predict Your Politics Based on These 5 Monster Questions?” 

quiz cover with a monster on the cover

4. Multiple-choice quiz

A multiple-choice quiz is an assessment quiz that includes multiple options but only one correct answer. It often comes in the format of “How Much Do You Know About [something]? Or “Do You Know [something]?”

Here is an example from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee:

quiz from Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee

5. Yes/No quiz

“Yes” and “no” are two simple words, but if you put them into a political typology quiz, they can help reveal a lot about your potential voters. 

A yes/no quiz includes one statement and two answer options: yes and no. This quiz type is an excellent choice if you want to create a trivia quiz but don’t want to provide too many details. 

Here is an example from The New York Times:

quiz question with yes/no answers

Alternatively, you can create a true/false quiz, which also has one correct answer. 

Because a yes/no or true/false quiz has short and to-the-point answers, they don’t take as long to complete. They’re great for increasing the completion rate and your lead capture conversion rate. 

6. Matching quiz

A matching quiz can help assess quiz-taker political knowledge. You can ask them to match presidents with years of service, pictures with names, events with data, political beliefs with political parties, and more. 

With Interact, you can make such quizzes in minutes. Here is an excellent example from Time:

matching quiz with Presidents and timeline

To take this quiz, quiz-takers need to click or tap and drag a president’s portrait to the years he was in office. They’ll receive their scores after finishing the quiz. 

7. Scored quiz

A scored quiz allows your supporters to add up their points through the quiz. Their final quiz result is based on the total number of points they get by answering quiz questions. 

quiz score
Source: Stuff

Scored quizzes can come in many forms, but they often end up being IQ quizzes, which test the quiz-takers’ political knowledge. 

The easiest way to create a scored quiz is by replicating your personality quiz with the scored quiz system. 

Create a quiz CTA

Tips for using political quizzes to generate leads

Here are some tips to create a political quiz worth taking and to bring you as many leads as possible. 

1. Understand your quiz-takers

Your quiz-takers are your potential supporters or voters. They’re the people who will take your quiz and possibly sign up for your email list. 

So before you create your political quiz, ask yourself these questions:

  • What will make voters take your quiz? 
  • What value are you promising to provide?
  • Why will your political party quiz be irresistible to quiz-takers once they see it?
  • How will your quiz remind them of your campaign and inspire them to subscribe? 
  • What questions should you ask to learn about your supporters and segment your email list?

Think through these questions until you have clear answers. 

For people who want to know about their political style, a personality quiz could be a good hook. For political fans, maybe a quiz about determining their political savvy would attract a lot of attention. 

Go back to the basics of what your supporters really want, then create a political party quiz that will appeal to those desires. 

2. Build an exciting quiz experience

Once you get someone to click on your political quiz, don’t disappoint them. Please them with the quiz design and experience. 

To consistently impress potential supporters, create beautiful quizzes with your logo, colors, and pictures. 

quiz result for political genius
Source: Women.com

Alternatively, using a mix of different quiz questions to challenge quiz-takers can help take your quiz to the next level. 

Need inspiration? Check out Interact’s 800 quiz templates, borrow the ideas you like, and start designing your first political quiz. 

3. Ask questions to segment

You can segment your email list based on quiz-takers’ results of your political quiz. This is what separates a quiz from a typical lead magnet.

By using segmentation, you can increase email marketing metrics like email open rate and click-through rate. Because when you segment your email list, it’s easier to send supporters what they want, when they want it. 

The best practice is to create a few questions within the quiz that allow you to meaningfully segment quiz-takers. These questions could be based on geographic location, age, gender, or political party. You can even segment your supporters by their interests, like the health care system, lower taxes, free market, or free trade. 

Look at this 2019 vote compass quiz from ABC News. It has 30 questions that ask how quiz-takers’ views align with those of the candidates. 

quiz question about Australian Parliament representation

When you’re done with all the questions, the quiz will ask a few more. These questions are meant for segmenting quiz-takers into specific groups. They’re given an option to skip if they don’t want to share personal details. 

segmenting questions from ABCNews poll

Here’s another good example from The Guardian:

demographic questions

Study your target audience first, then decide the best way to segment them into smaller groups.

4. Write a compelling quiz title for social media 

Quizzes get most of their traffic from social media, so remember to optimize your quiz title to make it stand out.

Think this way: If you’re someone’s ideal candidate, chances are that when they see your quiz, they’ll share it with others to support you.

And where will they share? No doubt, on social media sites. 

That’s why optimizing your quiz title is crucial. By doing that, you can make your quiz more engaging and worth taking.

The “Who Should You Vote For?” quiz is good, but the “Take This Quiz to Discover Your Ideal President 2020” is much better. 

5. Write questions that entertain on their own

Quizzes bring unlimited creative possibilities. So don’t be afraid to make the experience enjoyable by asking fun questions.

Asking personal questions is a good starting point. People really enjoy talking about themselves and want to discover themselves. 

For example, if the quiz is “How Donald Trump Are You?”, ask a question like “Which of your qualities is most like Trump’s?” and add four answer options: Charming, Intelligence, Confidence, and Diplomacy. 

Quizzes are anonymous, so try to ask your supporters for some personal questions. 

Ridiculous questions are also effective. By “ridiculous,” we mean “informal” questions like this one from Joe:

quiz question about someone from a different culture moving in next door

Remember that a quiz is a one-to-one conversation with the quiz-taker. So, you can drop some of the formality and use your toned-down voice. 

You can also vary your quiz with non-political questions. A political quiz isn’t necessarily about politics, especially if it’s a personality quiz. 

For the “How Donald Trump Are You?” quiz, you can ask this question:

How big are your hands quiz question

It’s okay to entertain your supporters with non-political questions. 

6. Add visuals to your quiz

A compelling political quiz should include some visuals, especially an eye-catching image cover. 

Why?

Because 65% of people are visual learners. That means by adding pictures to your quiz, you can quickly draw attention and get supporters to engage with you. 

Interact allows you to create a quiz image cover and add picture-based questions. You can search for images from Unsplash, Giphy, or upload your own pictures. 

Unsplash results in Interact

Check out these useful tutorials to get started:

create your own quiz

7. Borrow these title ideas for your political party quiz

If you’re ready to create your first political party quiz but don’t know how to get started, get inspired by the following ideas. 

  • Can You Pass This 10-Question Climate Change Quiz?
  • How Much Do You Know About Human Rights?
  • What Type of Public Servant Are You?
  • What’s Your Political Type? 
  • Government Regulation Trivia Quiz
  • Do You Actually Belong to the Democratic Party?
  • What Do You Know About the U.S. Federal Government?
  • Even a High School Student Can Pass This Equal Rights Quiz. Can You?
  • How Democrat/Republican Are You?
  • What Is Your Political Ideology?
  • Are You Libertarian?
  • Test Your Knowledge of Foreign Policy With This Quiz
  • This Trivia Quiz About Government Spending May Surprise You
  • How Liberal or Conservative Are You? 
  • What’s Your Political Personality?
  • Think President Trump Will Increase Minimum Wage? Take This Quiz to Find Out
  • A Quick Quiz to Match You With a Democratic Candidate 
  • Take the Political Party Quiz to Know Where You Fit on the Political Spectrum!
  • How Politically Biased Are You?
  • Are You Eligible for Medicaid?
  • What Do You Know About Voting and the Election in the United States? 
  • How Much Do You Know About Presidential Debates?
  • Presidential Campaign Slogans Quiz
  • Presidential Quotes Quiz
  • Do You Actually Know About Global Warming?
  • How Much Do You Know About Presidential Elections?
  • Republican National Conventions Quiz
  • How Much Do You Know About 2020 Presidential Candidates?
  • If You Can Pass This Labor Union Quiz, You’re a Genius!
  • True-or-False Quiz: How Well Do You Know Social Security?
  • Take This Quiz to Test Your Knowledge of Welfare Programs
  • Supreme Court Decisions Quiz
  • U.S. Presidents Trivia Quiz
  • The Supreme Court Trivia Quiz 
  • What Do You Know About Congress?

Ask better quiz questions and your supporters will engage with you. 

Congrats! You’ve created your first political party quiz and put it on your website to collect leads. It’s time to discover what you should do when your first leads start coming in. 

What you need to do with a quiz lead once you have one

If you’ve ever subscribed to a political candidate’s email list, you may have noticed that the first email you receive is something like: “Thank you for signing up.”

It’s an excellent way to initiate a conversation and let supporters know that you’ll keep in touch with them through email. 

Here’s what you should keep in mind:

1. Segment based on engagement 

A political quiz allows you to obtain additional information when people take the quiz. So, make use of those pieces of information to segment your recipients out. Then, personalize emails to make them feel relevant. 

Why is that important? 

First, universal relevancy is impossible if you send the same email to each and every supporter. 

Second, supporters on your email list care about different things. The best way to engage them is to send emails that are relevant to the things they care about. 

Obama for America’s email campaign is remarkable in its detailed segmentation. By asking better demographic quiz questions, they segmented supporters into different groups as below:

  • Dedicated supporters
  • People who may be on the fence
  • People who have donated over $200
  • People who have donated less than $200
  • People who have yet to donate at all

By targeting and personalizing emails, you can drastically improve their relevance, and you’ll have a higher chance of getting supporters to respond. 

Learn from President Obama!

2. Create a welcome email

Whether you’re a politician or an e-commerce brand, greet new subscribers with a welcome email. 

Remember: A welcome email is one of the most important emails you’ll ever send to subscribers. It’s the email that can make or break their first impression of your campaign or yourself. Get it right early on, and you’ll have a highly engaged subscriber from the get-go. 

For example, here is the automated welcome email Joe Biden sends to his new email signups. 

biden welcome email

This welcome email is great because:

  • It’s sent right after people subscribe to the email list. Subscribers are most engaged within the first 48 hours of signing up—so the sooner, the better.
  • It has a simple but straightforward email subject: “You’re on the list!” Asking a question to arouse curiosity is good, but remember to keep it simple. The subject line should be no more than 10 words. With the election season well underway, your supporters may have noticed an influx of emails in their inbox from many political organizations. A short, clear subject line will help grab their attention. 
  • It thanks the subscriber. The email doesn’t start with a big thank-you, but it ends with “Thanks again, we’re so excited to have you here.” That’s good enough to show appreciation to subscribers. 
  • It explains the benefits right away. Notice the line “This campaign will be about you…” which explains what subscribers will get from being on the email list. 
  • It’s clear. Four bullets tell subscribers what they need to do next. 

Apply these lessons when you write a welcome email to your leads.

Also, consider these extra tips to take your email from good to great:

  • Make it personal. Because you may collect quiz-takers’ names, greeting them by name is a smart way to start a conversation. 
  • Tell your story. A welcome email could be a perfect time to share the story about your campaign or your values with supporters so they can get to know you better. This helps subscribers remember that there are actual humans (you) behind the email, even when you set it to send automatically. 
  • Use clean and simple graphics or plain text. Clean emails are more user-friendly and ensure your message will come through. 
  • Speak to the heart. Write each email like a personal letter (Use “I” and “you”) to your supporters and share the emotions that propel your campaign forward. This authenticity will help you gain their trust. 
  • Build a contrast. What will the future look like if you win? What is at stake if your opponent wins? Let your supporters know your plan and your goal initially, and they’ll stay with you forever. 

3. Don’t be afraid to ask 

If you’re running an election campaign, include a clear call-to-action donation button. Ensure it leads straight to your donation page and that it’s above the fold so recipients will see it as soon as they open the email. 

To convince supporters to donate, add a short explanation of why you need their donation and how you will use the money.

Case in point:

Biden campaign email request for donation

Also, use a specific dollar ask so supporters know the minimum amount they can donate. Bear in mind that not all dollar asks are appropriate for all supporters.

Create a quiz CTA

Key takeaways 

Political quizzes are a powerful tool. They: 

  • Generate leads for your political campaign or business
  • Educate your target audience about politics and drive a lot of traffic to your site with a fun, enjoyable quiz experience 
  • Collect valuable information about your target audience and segment your list based on that information

Sound good? 

Use Interact to create your first political quiz, embed it to your website, or share it on social media. You’ll be happily surprised by the results you’ll get. 

Happy quizzing!

What is the best quiz for you business?

Quizzes are super effective for lead generation and selling products. Find the best quiz for your business by answering a few questions.

Take the quiz