- Nearly 200 political scientists ranked the presidents by order of greatness in a survey, and President Donald Trump came in last.
- President Abraham Lincoln was first.
- Members of the American Political Science Association’s Presidents & Executive Politics section completed the survey online between December 2017 and January 2018.
Presidential rankings tend to be subjective and divisive, but they also provide valuable insight into how historical views of presidents evolve over time.
In a recent survey, nearly 200 political science scholars ranked US presidents on a scale of 0-100, from failure (zero) to average (50) to great (100). The totals were then averaged for each president and ranked from highest to lowest.
A majority of the 170 respondents – roughly 57% – identified as Democrats. Just 13% were Republicans, while 27% said they were independents, and 3% selected other.
The skewed sampling plus the fact that President Donald Trump was just starting his second year in office make it difficult to accurately compare him to previous presidents.
But even among Republicans, Trump was ranked quite unfavorably. Respondents who identified as Republicans or conservatives ranked Trump 40th out of 44 presidents. Self-described Democrats and liberals both ranked him last.
Here are the greatest US presidents, ranked according to current and recent members of the American Political Science Association:
44: Donald Trump
43: James Buchanan
42: William Harrison
41: Franklin Pierce
40: Andrew Johnson
39: Warren Harding
38: Millard Fillmore
37: John Tyler
36: Herbert Hoover
35: Zachary Taylor
34: James Garfield
33: Richard Nixon
32: Benjamin Harrison
31: Chester Arthur
30: George W. Bush
29: Rutherford B. Hayes
28: Calvin Coolidge
27: Martin Van Buren
26: Jimmy Carter
25: Gerald Ford
24: Grover Cleveland
23: John Quincy Adams
22: William Howard Taft
21: Ulysses S. Grant
20: James Polk
19: William McKinley
18: James Monroe
17: George H.W. Bush
16: John F. Kennedy
15: Andrew Jackson
14: John Adams
13: Bill Clinton
12: James Madison
11: Woodrow Wilson
10: Lyndon B. Johnson
9: Ronald Reagan
8: Barack Obama
7: Dwight Eisenhower
6: Harry Truman
5: Thomas Jefferson
4: Teddy Roosevelt
3: Franklin Delano Roosevelt
2: George Washington
1: Abraham Lincoln
