Question

“Barack Obama was elected president in 2008”.

Is this sentence Active or Passive and why?

Answer 1

This sentence is a passive sentence.

Explanation

This is a subject implied case. A subject implied sentence in active-passive voice is a sentence that is passive but the subject is missing. While converting it into active we have to provide the subject from our side. This sentence is already passive. So we will provide the subject ‘People’ from our side. Hence the active voice of the given sentence will be as given below:

People elected Barack Obama president in 2008.  

Since the passive sentence is in Simple Past Tense, the active sentence will also be in Simple Past Tense.  

Active Present Perfect = S + V2 + O.

Passive Present Perfect = O + was/were + V3 + by + S