In a survey of 1,006 registered voters in the United States by J.L. Partners, incumbent POTUS Joe Biden was ranked as the worst among nine out of the ten most recent Presidents (Gerald Ford was excluded for an undisclosed reason). The poll used an unusual method, taking count of how many voters place a president in the top and bottom two in their personal ranking. 44 per cent of respondents placed him in the worst two, while only 14 per cent placed him in the top two, giving him a net score of negative 30.
Incoming President Trump, who is only the second POTUS in history to be elected to a non-consecutive term after Grover Cleveland, has a net score of negative 15. That ranks him #7 out of the nine Presidents polled. Richard Nixon, the only President in history to have resigned from office, is ‘sandwiched’ between the two most recent men to occupy the Oval Office in the #8 spot.
Republican Ronald Reagan (in office 1981–1989) was ranked #1 on the list, with a net score of plus 30 points, followed by Democrat Barack Obama (2009–2017), with a net score of plus 21.
It comes as a surprise to no-one that President Biden is not very popular with the American public. His most recent approval rating by Gallup is just 38 per cent. It was even as low as 36 per cent, in the aftermath of his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump in July.
He also became only the second President after Lyndon B Johnson in 1968 to drop out of his bid for re-election despite being eligible according to the 22nd Amendment. What’s worse, it was quite obvious that he did not come to that decision on his own, as he had repeatedly voiced that he wanted to stay in the race, even days before the announcement that he was stepping down; and many within his own party had publicly pressured him to do so.
President Biden had to also face constant questioning about his mental acuity, the apparent lack of which was on full display at the aforementioned debate. Even prior to that, Special Counsel Robert Hur, appointed by his own Justice Department, published a damning report on his mental state as part of an investigation into his alleged mishandling of classified information. The ‘Hur Report’ in February 2024 made claims such as he did not remember when he was serving as Vice President of the United States.
The only President before him to have such issues with his mental capacities was Woodrow Wilson, after his stroke in October 1919. Just like with Wilson, some of the Presidential responsibilities were taken over by the First Lady in the case of Biden as well.
This poll was published shortly after President Biden’s controversial pardoning of his son Hunter Biden. Biden had repeatedly stated that he would not issue clemency to his son convicted of lying on a federal firearms form and tax evasion, but broke his word nonetheless. In addition, he gave a pardon as broad and unrestricted as the similarly controversial one President Ford gave to President Nixon after the Watergate scandal.
J.L. Partners was among the most accurate pollsters for the 2024 US Presidential Election. In their final poll, they had President Trump leading Vice President Kamala Harris by three points nationally, and he ended up winning by 1.5 points. Furthermore, they were among the very few firms that had President Trump winning in the election in their final forecast; although they did underestimate him in the Electoral College (they projected 291 electoral votes for him, and he ended up getting 312).
Shortly after the publishing of the J.L. Partners poll, CBS News came out with a survey of 'presidential historians', where, evidently, President Biden is ranked a lot better and President Trump is ranked a lot worse.
Biden came in #19 out of 45, despite the historic challenges to his time in office; while President Trump is ranked #43, only ahead of two ‘villains’ of the Civil War era, Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan.
There are some objective issues with ranking the current President-elect as low. None of the others in the bottom eight Presidents were even considered for renomination by their respective parties due to their unpopularity (or, in the case of Warren Harding and William Henry Harrison, untimely deaths). Meanwhile, President Trump won the nomination of his party three times in a row, a rare feat; and he did so in the binding primary election era, so he won over the voters of the party, not the delegates.
At least, however, President Trump’s perception by ‘experts’ is moving in the right direction—in a presidential ranking by the American Political Science Association released in February, he was ranked dead last.
On the off chance that anyone is interested, Democrat Franklin D Roosevelt (1933–1945) was chosen as the best president in US history by historians, followed by Republican Abraham Lincoln (1861–1865), then technically non-partisan, in ideology Federalist George Washington (1789–1797).
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