What is Boris Johnson’s IQ?
Unfounded and untraceable: the 79 some searches return has no test, no source and no origin — the real record is two competitive scholarships and a 2:1 he called a letdown.
No IQ test result has ever been published for Boris Johnson, and the 79 that surfaces in some searches — including German-language ones — traces to no source we could find. His documented record, a King’s Scholarship at Eton, a Brackenbury Scholarship in Classics at Balliol College, Oxford, an Oxford Union presidency and three of the UK’s most senior offices, supports an estimated IQ of about 125–140.
Boris Johnson’s estimated IQ
- A King’s Scholar at Eton College from 1977, one of roughly fourteen boys admitted each year on the results of a competitive examination, rather than as a fee-paying Oppidan.
- A Brackenbury Scholar in Classics (Literae Humaniores) at Balliol College, Oxford, which he attended from 1983 to 1987 — another competitively awarded place, confirmed by Balliol’s own account of his time there.
- Elected President of the Oxford Union in 1986, a termly office chosen by the Union’s members after a contested campaign and long regarded as a proving ground for British political and media careers.
- Editor of The Spectator from 1999 to 2005, during which the magazine’s circulation grew by roughly 10 percent, before he left to concentrate on Parliament.
- Held three of the most senior offices in UK public life in succession: Mayor of London (2008–2016), Foreign Secretary (2016–2018) and Prime Minister (2019–2022).
He graduated from Oxford with upper second-class honors (a 2:1), not the first his tutors reportedly expected, and no IQ score, SAT-equivalent result or other cognitive test has ever been published for him. Winning elected and appointed office reflects campaigning skill, party support, timing and circumstance as well as ability, so this range is inferred from achievement and documented selection, not measured.
- Born
- June 19, 1964, New York City, United States
- Education
- Eton College (King’s Scholar, from 1977); Balliol College, Oxford (Brackenbury Scholar), BA Literae Humaniores, 1983–1987, upper second-class honors
- Documented tests
- No IQ test score published. The nearest measured results are the competitive entrance examinations behind his scholarships to Eton and Balliol
- Journalism
- The Times, 1987–1988; The Daily Telegraph, Brussels correspondent, 1989–1994; editor of The Spectator, 1999–2005
- Elected office
- MP for Henley, 2001–2008; Mayor of London, 2008–2016; MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, 2015–2023
- Cabinet and premiership
- Foreign Secretary, 2016–2018; Prime Minister, 2019–2022
- Circulating IQ figure
- None sourced; an unattributed 79 appears in some searches, including German-language ones, with no traceable origin found
- Estimated range here
- 125–140 (achievement and academic record)
What an IQ of 125–140 actually means
Set the claim aside for a moment. If someone genuinely scored in this range, here is what that would represent.
| Score range | Classification | Share of people | What it indicates |
|---|---|---|---|
| 85 – 114 | Average | ~68% | The range most people fall into. |
| 115 – 129 | Above average | ~13.6% | Roughly one person in seven. |
| 130 – 144 | Gifted | ~2% | The threshold most high-IQ societies use. |
| Above 144 | Highly gifted | ~0.1% | Figures above this range are extrapolated from the curve rather than measured. |
Percentages are approximate and describe a normal distribution. The same number means different things on tests with different standard deviations.
Thirty questions gives you a measured position on this exact scale — your score, your percentile and the ability breakdown behind it.
Find out in 30 minutes →Who Boris Johnson is
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was born on June 19, 1964 in Manhattan, New York City, the eldest of the four children of Stanley and Charlotte Johnson. The family moved between the United States, England and Belgium during his early childhood; he attended the European School, Brussels I, briefly in 1973 and Ashdown House preparatory school in East Sussex from 1975. In the fall of 1977 he entered Eton College as a King’s Scholar, one of roughly fourteen boys admitted each year on the results of a competitive examination and housed separately in College. He matriculated at Balliol College, Oxford, in 1983 as a Brackenbury Scholar — another competitively awarded place — to read Literae Humaniores, the classics and philosophy course Oxford calls “Greats”. In 1986 he was elected President of the Oxford Union, and in 1987 he graduated with upper second-class honors, a 2:1 he later described as a disappointment; Balliol’s own account of his time there records him as the fourth of its alumni to become prime minister, after H. H. Asquith, Harold Macmillan and Edward Heath.
Johnson joined The Times as a graduate trainee in late 1987 and was dismissed within a year after fabricating a quote in a May 1988 news story: reporting the discovery of a medieval royal palace, he attributed to his own godfather, the historian Colin Lucas, a colourful claim that Edward II held court there with his “catamite, Piers Gaveston” — impossible on the facts, since Gaveston was executed in 1312, years before the building in the story was constructed. He moved to The Daily Telegraph in 1989, serving as its Brussels correspondent covering the European Commission until 1994 and later as assistant editor and chief political columnist. In July 1999 he became editor of The Spectator, a post he held until 2005, during which the magazine’s circulation grew by roughly 10 percent; alongside the editorship he wrote several books, including the novel Seventy-Two Virgins (2004) and, a decade later, The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History (2014), a biography of the wartime prime minister.
Johnson was elected Conservative MP for Henley in 2001, holding the seat until 2008, when he resigned it after being elected Mayor of London — defeating the incumbent Ken Livingstone on May 1, 2008 and beating him again in 2012 to win a second term. As mayor until May 9, 2016, his tenure included the London leg of the 2012 Olympic Games and the introduction of London’s cycle-hire scheme. He returned to the House of Commons in 2015 as MP for the newly drawn Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency, holding both roles concurrently for almost a year. In the 2016 referendum on European Union membership he became the most prominent public figure of the Vote Leave campaign, appearing alongside Michael Gove; after the Leave side won, he was appointed Foreign Secretary on July 13, 2016 under Prime Minister Theresa May, a post from which he resigned on July 9, 2018.
Johnson became Prime Minister on July 24, 2019, after winning the Conservative Party leadership contest that followed Theresa May’s resignation, and led the party to a majority of 80 seats in the general election of December 12, 2019, fought chiefly on completing the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union; the UK left the EU on January 31, 2020. His premiership was then dominated by the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He announced his resignation as party leader on July 7, 2022 and left Downing Street on September 6, 2022, when Liz Truss succeeded him as Prime Minister.
By Elora Mercer, Celebrity Research WriterFigures checked by Leon Falkner, Data & Research AnalystReviewed by Aarav Vardhan, Editor-in-Chief · Last reviewed August 2026
Boris Johnson: the documented record
The estimate above rests on this record. Every entry here is a matter of public fact, which is more than can be said for the number itself.
- 1964Born Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson on June 19 in Manhattan, New York City.
- 1977Enters Eton College as a King’s Scholar.
- 1983Matriculates at Balliol College, Oxford, as a Brackenbury Scholar reading Literae Humaniores.
- 1986Elected President of the Oxford Union.
- 1987Graduates from Oxford with upper second-class honors; joins The Times.
- 1988Dismissed from The Times after fabricating a quote attributed to historian Colin Lucas.
- 1989–1994Serves as Brussels correspondent for The Daily Telegraph.
- 1999–2005Editor of The Spectator; circulation grows by roughly 10 percent.
- 2008–2016Mayor of London for two terms, first elected on May 1, 2008.
- 2016Most prominent public figure of the Vote Leave campaign; appointed Foreign Secretary on July 13, resigns in July 2018.
- 2019–2022Prime Minister, from July 24, 2019 to September 6, 2022.
Why no figure circulates
Following a claim back to its first appearance is the part almost nobody does — and it is what most people are actually asking.
What is Boris Johnson’s IQ? Type the question into a search box and, unlike most people profiled on this site, no single number comes back with any consistency. Results split between his own remarks on the distribution of IQ across the population and an unsourced 79 that some search boxes surface, including German-language ones asking for his “IQ von 79”. Neither is a measurement of him. celebrityiqs.com, which carries entries for dozens of politicians — Barack Obama at 145, James Madison at 155 — has no page for Boris Johnson at all, and neither does iqtesta.com, which lists public figures well outside the front rank of fame. realiqtest.org’s own profile of him states plainly that “there is no reliable public record showing that Boris Johnson has released a professionally administered full-scale IQ score.” How numbers like these usually arise, real or invented, is covered in where celebrity IQ numbers come from.
The 79 is worth chasing precisely because it is so specific. We searched for it in English and in German — “Boris Johnson IQ 79”, “boris johnson iq von 79” — and opened every page a search turns up for Boris Johnson and IQ together; none states 79, cites a test, or names a source for it. It does not appear on either celebrity-IQ site checked above, in a newspaper archive, or in the one piece of satire this search found, a NewsThump spoof published the same week as Johnson’s real November 2013 remarks on IQ, which invented a joke about paying school fees rather than a score. A figure of 79 would sit in the “borderline” band on a standard IQ classification table (see how IQ scores are classified) — a description nothing in his scholarship-funded, twice-elected record supports. Absent a source, the honest answer is the one this page gives whenever a number cannot be found: it is not on record, and repeating it would only add one more invented figure to a story that already has too few real ones.
What does exist, and probably explains why “boris johnson iq test” is a search query at all, are two real events three weeks apart in late 2013. In a November lecture honoring Margaret Thatcher, delivered to the Center for Policy Studies, Johnson said that “as many as 16 percent of our species have an IQ below 85, while about 2 percent have an IQ above 130”, part of an argument that inequality was a necessary “spur to economic activity”; he illustrated the point with cornflakes, saying the “income gap between the top cornflakes and the bottom cornflakes” should not be allowed to stop talent rising. The 85-and-130 figures describe the general population on a standard bell-curve distribution (see how the IQ bell curve works), not Johnson himself, but Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg called the remarks “a fairly unpleasant, careless elitism” and likened the framing to talking about people “as if we are a sort of breed of dogs.” Days later, on December 3, 2013, LBC radio gave Johnson, by then in his second term as Mayor of London, a live 45-minute segment billed informally as an IQ test; asked to take two apples from three, he answered “loads of apples”, then “one apple” — the correct answer was two — declined a further question, and said afterward, “No one said IQ is the only measure of ability.” Neither event produced a number for his own IQ.
Placed beside the other British prime ministers profiled on this site, Johnson’s estimated range sits toward the lower end of a wide field. Margaret Thatcher carries a published range of 135–150 here on the same achievement-and-academic-record method used for Johnson; Winston Churchill, the subject of Johnson’s own 2014 book The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History, carries 140–160 on a historiometric method that weighs a lifetime of published work rather than school results. What holds this page’s range down relative to both is that Johnson’s own Oxford result was a 2:1, not a first: Balliol tutors reportedly remembered him as “a good egg” expected to take a first, and he did not take one. That gap, between an early competitive result — the King’s Scholarship exam at around thirteen, the Brackenbury Scholarship at eighteen — and a good-but-not-exceptional final degree, is close to what regression to the mean predicts: an extreme score on one measure tends to be followed by a less extreme one on the next. The Oxford Union presidency and three national offices that followed are achievements, not test results, which is why this estimate is built from achievement and documented selection rather than claimed as a measurement.
How we read a number →Confirms he attended Balliol from 1983 to 1987, was a Brackenbury Scholar, read Literae Humaniores, was elected President of the Oxford Union in 1986, and was the fourth Balliol alumnus to become prime minister after H. H. Asquith, Harold Macmillan and Edward Heath.
Orientation source for birth details (June 19, 1964, Manhattan), schooling before Eton, Eton King’s Scholar status, the 2:1 degree result, career dates at The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator, Henley and Uxbridge and South Ruislip MP dates, Mayor of London terms, Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister dates, and the Vote Leave role.
States he graduated with a 2:1 rather than the first his tutors expected, and quotes the description of him as “a good egg” destined for a first.
Gives the exact quotes from Johnson’s November 2013 Margaret Thatcher Lecture — “16 percent of our species have an IQ below 85”, “about 2 percent” above 130, the cornflakes line — and Nick Clegg’s response calling it “a fairly unpleasant careless elitism” and comparing it to talk of “a sort of breed of dogs”.
Describes the informal 45-minute live radio segment on LBC, the apples question (“loads of apples”, then “one apple”, correct answer two), and Johnson’s comment afterward that “no one said IQ is the only measure of ability”.
States directly that there is no reliable public record of a professionally administered full-scale IQ score for him, and that his IQ is not publicly verified.
Neither site has a page for Boris Johnson. celebrityiqs.com carries entries for many other politicians, including Barack Obama (145) and James Madison (155), which makes the absence of an entry for Johnson notable rather than an oversight of an obscure name.
The one satire piece this search found responding to the 2013 remarks; it invents a joke about buying a place at Eton, not an IQ score, and gives no figure of 79 or any other number.
Confirms the item is Boris Johnson the politician (label “Boris Johnson”, description “Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2019 to 2022”, date of birth June 19, 1964), not a namesake.
Confirms his service as MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip from 2015 and that he left the House of Commons in June 2023.
Confirms Johnson defeated Ken Livingstone in both the 2008 election (May 1) and the 2012 election (51.5 percent to 48.5 percent in the second round), and that the Conservatives won 365 of 650 seats — a majority of 80 — in the December 12, 2019 general election, with the UK leaving the EU on January 31, 2020.
The sources behind our estimate
The figures that circulate for Boris Johnson, what we were able to confirm, and where the two diverge.
No specific IQ number is widely and consistently attached to Boris Johnson’s name the way a single figure attaches to many people on this site. Searches instead surface two real 2013 events — a speech about the distribution of IQ across society and a flubbed live radio segment billed as an IQ test — and, in some search boxes, including German-language ones, an unsourced 79.
We found no published IQ test result for Boris Johnson, and no page in English or German that states an IQ of 79 for him or names a test, examiner or date behind it. realiqtest.org’s profile of him states plainly that “there is no reliable public record showing that Boris Johnson has released a professionally administered full-scale IQ score.” celebrityiqs.com, which carries entries for dozens of other politicians — Barack Obama at 145, James Madison at 155 — has no page for him, and neither does iqtesta.com. What we did find is his November 2013 Margaret Thatcher Lecture, in which he said “as many as 16 percent of our species have an IQ below 85, while about 2 percent have an IQ above 130” while defending inequality as a “spur to economic activity” — a statement about the population, not about himself — and a live LBC radio segment on December 3, 2013 in which he answered simple questions incorrectly. Neither produces a personal score, let alone 79.
With no real circulating figure to place against the range, the spread here is just the range’s own ends. If the unsourced 79 is what brought you to this page: it names no test and no source, so — unlike the documented gap this site usually finds between a sourced record and an inflated claim — there is nothing here to measure it against. It simply is not on record.
Want a number that does hold up? Every figure on this page is somebody’s claim. Take the 30-question test and get a percentile you can check rather than a figure you have to trust.
Boris Johnson — frequently asked
What is Boris Johnson’s IQ?
Boris Johnson’s IQ has never been measured in public: no IQ test result has been published for him. His documented record — a King’s Scholarship at Eton, a Classics scholarship and the Oxford Union presidency at Balliol College, Oxford, and three of the UK’s most senior offices — supports an estimated IQ of roughly 125–140.
Is Boris Johnson’s IQ 79?
No source we could find states this. An IQ of 79 for Boris Johnson does not appear on any celebrity-IQ site, in any news archive, or in any satire piece turned up by searches in English or German, including the “IQ von 79” search some autocomplete suggestions produce. It has no traceable origin and no test behind it.
Did Boris Johnson take an IQ test?
No formal IQ test result has ever been published or reliably reported for him. The closest event on record is a live, informal 45-minute segment on LBC radio in December 2013, in which he was asked simple arithmetic and logic questions and answered several incorrectly; it was framed as entertainment, not a real assessment.
What did Boris Johnson say about IQ in 2013?
In a November 2013 speech honoring Margaret Thatcher, Johnson said “as many as 16 percent of our species have an IQ below 85, while about 2 percent have an IQ above 130”, using the figures to argue that inequality helps talent rise. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg called the remarks “a fairly unpleasant, careless elitism.”
Is Boris Johnson a genius?
No test supports that label; “genius” usually implies a measured score near the top one percent, and none exists for him. His record — competitive scholarships to Eton and Oxford, the Oxford Union presidency, and Mayor of London, Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister — shows sustained high achievement without a genius-level test score to point to.
What degree did Boris Johnson get from Oxford?
He read Literae Humaniores — Classics, known at Oxford as “Greats” — at Balliol College as a Brackenbury Scholar, graduating in 1987 with upper second-class honors, a 2:1. He reportedly hoped for a first, and Balliol tutors are said to have expected one too.
How does Boris Johnson’s estimated IQ compare with Margaret Thatcher’s?
Both estimates use the same achievement-and-academic-record method. Margaret Thatcher’s published range on this site is 135–150; Boris Johnson’s is 125–140, reflecting two competitive scholarships and an Oxford Union presidency offset by a 2:1 rather than a first-class degree. The ranges do not overlap, and Thatcher’s is the higher of the two.
How does my IQ compare with Boris Johnson?
You can find out in about fifteen minutes. The IQ Metrics assessment is 30 questions, scored on the same 100-mean scale used throughout this page, so your result and the estimate above are at least expressed in the same units — one measured, one inferred. Once you have a number, the leaderboard shows where it would sit, and how we score and norm it explains the benchmarking.
Where does this estimate come from?
From the documented record rather than a test — the method is named above and set out in full under how we read a number. Compare it against the other politics profiles, starting with Thomas Jefferson.
- Take the 30-question IQ test — get a measured score and percentile of your own
- Average IQ by country — how the scale behaves across populations
- How IQ Metrics scores its assessment — the method behind our own number
- More on how IQ testing works — reliability, error and what a score can and cannot say
- More politics profiles — same field, same method
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Official portrait by Shealah Craighead for the White House, public domain. Background removed for the portrait above. · Official White House photograph by Pete Souza (2012), public domain. Background removed for the portrait above. · Photograph by Eric Draper, White House, public domain. Background removed for the portrait above.
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