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
Here’s an estimate for the election - it’s very roughly what the newspapers say is going to happen
Party MPs
Conservatives 273
Labour 273
Liberal Democrats 28
Scottish Nationalists 52
Green 1
Plaid Cymru 4
UKIP 2
SDLP 3
DUP 9
Sinn Fein 5
TOTAL 650
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 have 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 !
Our figures are very rough guesses and will certainly be wrong when the votes are counted, but it looks like this year’s election is going to involve a bit of maths to work out a winner.
I’ll update these numbers with the real numbers when we know more.
I’m Jane,
Co-founder of Komodo, & mum of two
