A rating of U.S. presidents found Donald Trump was the nation’s worst ever leader while Joe Biden ranks 14th, putting him among the top-third of commanders-in-chief.
The 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey asked more than 500 members of the Presidents & Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association and recently published scholars to rate the 46 presidents in “overall greatness” on a scale of one to 100.
Respondents ranked Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and George Washington, respectively, at the top of the list.
Trump finished dead last behind James Buchanan, who preceded Lincoln and governed in the lead-up to the Civil War.
Overall, Democrats and independents agreed Trump should be at the bottom of the rankings while Republicans thought four presidents were worse. Republicans picked George Washington as the top president while choosing Lincoln — a Republican — second. Democrats rated Honest Abe and FDR ahead of the nation’s first leader.
With the next national election nine months away, pollsters are being less kind to Biden than historians.
A Real Clear Politics aggregate of national polls shows Trump holding a two-point lead on Biden in a rematch of the 2020 election. Both candidates are their party’s presumptive nominee, though Trump still faces a long-shot primary challenge from former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley. Robert Kennedy Jr., whose uncle John F. Kennedy ranked 10th on the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey, is running as an independent.
Of the living presidents, Barack Obama was the seventh most favored leader on the list, Bill Clinton came in at No. 12, Jimmy Carter ranked 22nd and George W. Bush finished 32nd.
Trump’s team did not return a Presidents Day request for comment.
The Washington Post reported Monday an unlikely link between Lincoln and Biden Monday. History’s greatest president, according to recently polled historians, reportedly pardoned Biden’s great-great-grandfather Moses J. Robinette after he nearly knifed a man to death in an 1864 brawl in Virginia. A trial transcript indicates Robinette claimed he acted in self-defense.
