Is Biden Already A Great President? New Survey Ranks Him 14th

A new survey of presidential scholars ranks President Joe Biden as the 14th best president in US history.

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Scholars Rank Biden The 14th Best All-Time President

The Presidential Greatness Survey was recently released. It was made up of members of the American Political Science Association who have published scholarly research on the presidency. The survey spanned the political spectrum, and here is some of what it found:

The results of this ranking are quite similar to the results from our previous surveys (released in 2015 and 2018): Abraham Lincoln again tops the list (95.03 average), followed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (90.83), George Washington (90.32), Teddy Roosevelt (78.58), Thomas Jefferson (77.53), Harry Truman (75.34), Barack Obama (73.8), and Dwight Eisenhower (73.73).

The most notable changes in this ordering are Franklin Delano Roosevelt moving up to #2 from the third spot last year, and Dwight Eisenhower falling back to #8 from #6 last year. The bottom of the rankings is also relatively stable. Donald Trump rates lowest (10.92), behind James Buchanan (16.71), Andrew Johnson (21.56), Franklin Pierce (24.6), William Henry Harrison (26.01), and Warren Harding (27.76).

The top and bottom of the rankings aren’t surprising. Trump may hold the bottom of the rankings for the rest of our lifetimes.

There is always some quibble about the top of the rankings, but it is usually just a reshuffling of the names. Although, Obama jumped several spots into the top 10, and as history looks back on his legacy, he could become top 5 in the future.

The interesting change is that President Biden makes his debut on the rankings at number 14. Biden is ranked higher than Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan, Ulysses S. Grant, James Monroe, and George H.W. Bush. Biden is also ranked higher than any modern Republican president, and only Dwight Eisenhower outranks Biden in terms of Republican presidents over the last 75 years.

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