All published Edexcel (9PL0) and AQA (7152) question papers and mark schemes (not including 2026)
In this page we bring together every Edexcel (specification 9PL0) and AQA (specification 7152) A-level Politics exam question that has asked about congressional elections in the USA (elections to the House of Representatives and the Senate). It should help you see exactly what has been asked before, how many marks each question was worth, and how the two exam boards differ in how often they test this topic.
In writing this page, every published question paper and mark scheme was checked, going back to when the current specifications began in 2018, plus each board’s specimen paper. Congressional elections form part of a wider topic (Edexcel calls it “US democracy and participation”; AQA calls it “Democracy and participation”), so the search also picked up questions where incumbency (the advantage held by a sitting politician who is running for re-election) could be used as part of the answer, even though it was not the main focus of the question. These are included below too, but clearly labelled as related rather than directly on the topic.
This page is designed to be read alongside two other histpology.co.uk pages: Congressional elections in the USA, which covers the structure of Congress and how House and Senate elections actually work, and Congressional Midterm Elections, which covers the theories behind why the president’s party usually loses seats at a midterm. Both are useful background before attempting the practice questions in Section 4 below.
Exam series checked: Edexcel Paper 3A, summer 2019, October 2020, November 2021, summer 2022, summer 2023 and summer 2024; AQA Paper 2, the pre-2019 specimen paper, summer 2019, November 2020, November 2021, summer 2022, summer 2023 and summer 2024. Series not located within the scope of this search (for example November 2019, November 2022, November 2023 and summer 2025) were not checked and may contain further relevant questions not recorded here.
1. Edexcel A-level Politics (9PL0), Paper 3A: Comparative Politics – USA
Congressional elections form part of the “US democracy and participation” content within Edexcel’s Paper 3A. Across the exam series checked, the topic has been tested through the extended Section C essay (30 marks), where candidates choose two questions from three on offer, rather than through the compulsory Section A or B questions.
Table 1: Edexcel Paper 3A question directly on congressional elections (of six series checked)
| Series | Question | Marks | Question text |
| Summer 2019 | Q3(c) | 30 | ‘Evaluate the view that the procedures for electing US presidents and members of Congress are not fit for purpose. You must consider this view and the alternative to this view in a balanced way.’ |
- Congressional elections are most often set as one of three optional 30-mark essays in Section C, so a well-prepared candidate could in principle avoid it entirely, unlike the compulsory Section A and B content.
- Where the topic is examined directly, as in the summer 2019 essay, the mark scheme rewards discussion of incumbency, the cost of campaign finance, and the two-year election cycle for the House of Representatives, which forces members to campaign almost continuously.
- No other series checked set a question with congressional elections as its central focus; the closest was the November 2021 Section C essay on voting behaviour in Congress, which is not included in Table 1 above because its main focus is how members vote once elected rather than how they are elected. Its mark scheme does, however, credit answers that link voting patterns to members “protecting their chances of re-election”, so it is worth skimming as background reading.
2. AQA A-level Politics (7152), Paper 2: Government and Politics of the USA and Comparative Politics
AQA’s specification places congressional elections within the “Democracy and participation” content of Paper 2, alongside presidential elections and direct democracy. Unlike Edexcel, no question set across the seven series checked took congressional elections, incumbency or midterm elections (elections held two years into a presidential term, when the entire House and around a third of the Senate face re-election) as its explicit subject. Table 2 lists the only two series, out of the seven checked, where congressional-election content was creditable in any form at all; the pre-2019 specimen paper and the November 2020, November 2021, summer 2023 and summer 2024 series tested unrelated content and are omitted here.
Table 2: AQA Paper 2 series in which congressional-election content was creditable (of seven series checked)
| Summer 2019 | Q1 (9) | ‘Explain and analyse three reasons why the USA might be described as having a two-party system.’ Indicative content credits first-past-the-post in congressional elections as one accepted reason. |
| Summer 2022 | Q1 (9) | ‘Explain and analyse three factors that can influence voting behaviour in the US.’ Mark scheme allows credit for incumbency “either in terms of presidents or Congress”. |
- Across the seven AQA series checked, no live question took congressional elections as its central focus; the closest was the campaign finance and party funding comparison set in summer 2024, which concentrated on funding rather than on the mechanics of House and Senate elections and is not included in Table 2 above.
- Where congressional-election material has been credited, as in the two series shown, it has been as one acceptable strand within a broader Section A question worth at most three marks of the nine available, since candidates need only develop three points to reach the top level.
- This pattern suggests congressional elections and incumbency are, on the evidence of the series checked, an under-examined part of AQA’s specification relative to Edexcel, where the topic anchored a full 30-mark essay in 2019. Teachers may wish to flag it as a plausible focus for a future Section B extract question or Section C essay.
3. Comparing the two boards
Edexcel has shown that congressional elections can sustain a full essay in its own right, evident in the summer 2019 paper, whereas AQA’s assessment record across the same period shows the topic being absorbed into wider questions on voting behaviour and the two-party system rather than examined as a discrete title.
For revision purposes, this means Edexcel candidates have direct past-paper precedent to draw on, while AQA candidates are better served preparing congressional elections and incumbency as supporting material for the broader questions on voting behaviour, the two-party system and campaign finance that AQA has, in practice, preferred to set.
Given that AQA has not yet dedicated a live question to the topic in the series surveyed, students should not assume it is a low-priority area: unexamined specification content of this kind is, if anything, more likely to appear in a future series.
4. Practice questions written in each board’s style
Sections 1 and 2 show that published questions dedicated to congressional elections are scarce, particularly for AQA. The three questions below for each board are original practice questions devised for this resource, not published examination material. Each is written to match the wording, mark allocation and rubric conventions of genuine questions surveyed above, and is built around content already covered in the accompanying study notes: incumbency, redistricting (the periodic redrawing of congressional district boundaries, sometimes to favour one party, known as gerrymandering when done deliberately) and the tendency for midterm elections to run against the sitting president’s party.
Edexcel (9PL0), Paper 3A
| Section | Marks | Question text | Format |
| Section A | 12 | Examine the extent to which incumbency benefits members of the US Congress and Members of Parliament in the UK. | Comparative examine |
| Section B | 12 | Analyse how the process for redrawing congressional district boundaries in the USA differs from the process for redrawing parliamentary constituency boundaries in the UK. In your answer you must consider the relevance of at least one comparative theory. | Analyse + theory |
| Section C | 30 | Evaluate the view that midterm congressional elections are best understood as a referendum on the performance of the sitting president. You must consider this view and the alternative to this view in a balanced way. | Evaluate, balanced |
What a strong answer would include
- Incumbency, Section A: explain the US advantage (name recognition, constituency casework, franking privileges, PAC donations flowing to sitting members, favourable district boundaries) and the UK equivalent (a personal vote built up over time, but weaker resources and no direct equivalent of franking); compare by weighing structural factors, House incumbents face election every two years but rarely lose, against the stronger pull of national swings on UK MPs.
- Redistricting, Section B: explain packing and cracking and how they reduce the number of genuinely competitive districts; use structural theory to contrast the US, where state legislatures usually control redistricting, with the UK’s more standardised Boundary Commission process; illustrate with contrasting examples, such as an independent commission state (California) against a state where the legislature draws the map (Texas).
- Midterms as referendum, Section C: use the pattern in your midterm election study notes, the president’s party has lost House seats in nearly every midterm since 2000, to support the referendum view; balance this against the 2002 exception (Bush’s approval after 9/11) and against local factors such as incumbency and candidate quality; reach a judgement rather than just listing both sides.
AQA (7152), Paper 2
| Section | Marks | Question text | Format |
| Section A | 9 | Explain and analyse three reasons why incumbent members of Congress are usually re-elected. | Explain and analyse three |
| Section A | 9 | Explain and analyse three ways in which redistricting can influence the outcome of elections to the House of Representatives. | Explain and analyse three |
| Section C | 25 | ‘Midterm congressional elections are decided more by national political trends than by the record of individual candidates.’ Analyse and evaluate this statement. | Analyse and evaluate |
What a strong answer would include
- Incumbency, Section A: give three distinct, developed reasons, for example name recognition and constituency service, the financial advantage incumbents hold with PACs and interest groups, and favourable redistricting; support each with the House’s consistently high re-election rate (regularly above 90 per cent) from your study notes.
- Redistricting, Section A: again give three developed points, for example packing, cracking and the creation of safe seats that push the meaningful contest into the primary election, which tends to favour more ideologically extreme candidates; a named state example for each point will help move answers into the top level.
- Midterms and national trends, Section C: agree using presidential approval ratings and the “six-year itch” pattern; disagree using cases where a strong or weak individual candidate outperformed or underperformed the national trend; remember AQA’s 25-mark essays are marked partly on synoptic links, so bring in party unity or campaign finance where relevant, and close with a clear, justified conclusion rather than a summary of both sides.
These are offered as a starting point for timed practice or homework rather than a substitute for the genuine past papers in Sections 1 and 2, and have not been through either board’s standardisation process, so should be marked against the generic level descriptors each board publishes for questions of the same length and command word, reproduced in the mark schemes cited in the Sources section below.
Sources
Primary sources (exam board question papers and mark schemes)
Pearson Edexcel, Mark Scheme (Results) Summer 2019, GCE Politics (9PL0) Paper 3A, and question paper P59408A, https://mmerevise.co.uk/app/uploads/2022/01/Edexcel-A-Level-JUN2019-Politics-Paper-3A-MS.pdf and accompanying question paper.
Pearson Edexcel, Mark Scheme (Results) October 2020, GCE Politics (9PL0) Paper 3A, https://mmerevise.co.uk/app/uploads/2022/01/Edexcel-A-Level-October-2020-Politics-Paper-3A-MS.pdf.
Pearson Edexcel, Mark Scheme (Results) November 2021, A Level Politics (9PL0) Paper 3A, https://qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/pdf/A-Level/Politics/2017/Exam-materials/9PL0_3A_rms_20211216.pdf.
Pearson Edexcel, Mark Scheme (Results) Summer 2022, GCE Politics (9PL0/3A) Comparative Politics – USA, https://cdn.savemyexams.com/uploads/2023/04/9pl0-3a-rms-20220818-markscheme-alevel-paper3a.pdf.
Pearson Edexcel, Mark Scheme (Results) Summer 2024, GCE Politics (9PL0) Paper 3A, https://qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/pdf/A-Level/Politics/2017/Exam-materials/9pl0-3a-rms-20240815.pdf.
AQA, A-level Politics 7152/2 specimen question paper, Paper 2 Government and Politics of the USA and Comparative Politics, https://filestore.aqa.org.uk/resources/politics/AQA-71522-SQP-CR.PDF.
AQA, Mark Scheme, A-level Politics 7152/2, June 2019, https://mmerevise.co.uk/app/uploads/2022/01/AQA-A-Level-JUN2019-Politics-Paper-2-MS.pdf.
AQA, Question Paper, A-level Politics 7152/2, June 2020 (November 2020 series), https://mmerevise.co.uk/app/uploads/2022/01/AQA-A-Level-NOV2020-Politics-Paper-2-QP.pdf.
AQA, Question Paper, A-level Politics 7152/2, November 2021, https://filestore.aqa.org.uk/sample-papers-and-mark-schemes/2021/november/AQA-71522-QP-NOV21.PDF.
AQA, Mark Scheme, A-level Politics 7152/2, June 2022, https://filestore.aqa.org.uk/sample-papers-and-mark-schemes/2022/june/AQA-71522-MS-JUN22.PDF.
AQA, Politics Answers and Commentaries, A-level (7152) Paper 2, marked answers from June 2022, https://filestore.aqa.org.uk/resources/politics/AQA-71522-EX.PDF.
AQA, Mark Scheme, A-level Politics 7152/2, June 2023, https://filestore.aqa.org.uk/sample-papers-and-mark-schemes/2023/june/AQA-71522-MS-JUN23.PDF.