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Surveys of scholars Over 1000 scholars have participated in the surveys. The issue of the validity of the rankings has been of special interest to historians and political scientists, who have tried to specify the relative importance of personality, leadership, issues and partisanship. Quantitative ranking by groups of scholars have been in favor in recent decades, displacing the traditional methods of evaluation by individual writers as typified by Bailey (1966) and most biographers. For a description of each of the polls, see the survey details section below. Because Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms and is counted as both the 22nd and 24th President, the total number of Presidents in each poll is at least one less than the number of the most recently-serving President in the poll. Because of their short time in office, Presidents William Henry Harrison and James Garfield are sometimes omitted from these polls. Current U.S. president George W. Bush is also absent in some rankings because his term is not yet completed. Presidents by average scholar rank Scholar surveys details The 1948 poll was conducted by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. of Harvard University (*). The 1962 survey was also conducted by Schlesinger, who surveyed 75 historians; the results of this survey are given in the book The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents by William A. Degregorio. Schlesinger's son Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. conducted another poll in 1996, not currently on the above chart. The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents also gives the results of the 1982 survey, a poll of 49 historians conducted by the Chicago Tribune. A notable difference from the 1962 Schlesinger poll was the ranking of President Eisenhower, who was ranked The Siena Research Institute of Siena College conducted surveys in 1982, 1990, 1994, and 2002. The 1994 survey placed only two Presidents, Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, above 80 points, and placed two Presidents, Andrew Johnson and Warren G. Harding, below 50 points. ( *, *) The 1996 column shows the results from a poll conducted from 1989 to 1996 by William J. Ridings, Jr. and Stuart B. McIver, and published in the book Rating the Presidents: A Ranking of U.S. leaders, from the Great and Honorable to the Dishonest and Incompetent. More than 719 people took part in the poll, primarily academic historians and political scientists, although some politicians and celebrities also took part. Participants from every state were included, and emphasis was placed upon getting input from female historians and "specialists in African-American studies", as well as a few non-American historians. Poll respondents rated the Presidents in five categories (leadership qualities, accomplishments & crisis management, political skill, appointments, character & integrity), and the results were tabulated to create the overall ranking. The C-SPAN Survey of Presidential Leadership was a 1999 survey of academic historians. It found that historians consider Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Franklin D. Roosevelt the three best presidents by a wide margin and William Henry Harrison, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan the worst. (*) A 2000 survey by The Wall Street Journal was published in Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and Worst in the White House, and is also available online. The participants consisted of an "ideologically balanced group of 132 prominent professors of history, law, and political science". This poll sought to include an equal number of liberals and conservatives in the survey, as the editors argued that previous polls were dominated by either one group or the other, but never balanced. The editors noted that the results of their poll were "remarkably similar" to the "mostly liberal" 1996 Schlesinger poll, with the main difference being the much higher ranking in the 2000 poll of President Ronald Reagan at Another presidential poll was conducted by The Wall Street Journal in 2005, with James Lindgren of Northwestern University Law School for the Federalist Society. () As in the 2000 survey, the editors sought to balance the opinions of liberals and conservatives, adjusting the results "to give Democratic- and Republican-leaning scholars equal weight." Editor James Taranto noted that Democratic-leaning scholars rated George W. Bush the sixth-worst president of all time, while Republican scholars rated him the sixth-best, giving President Bush an overall rating of "average". (*) Liberal and Conservative raters The Murray-Blessing 1982 survey asked historians whether they were liberal or conservative on domestic, social and economic issues. The table below shows that the two groups had only small differences in ranking the best and worst presidents. Source: Murray and Blessing p 135 Libertarian Views While no survey of libertarian historians has appeared, two libertarian economists Vedder and Gallaway created their own rankings by using only the percentage increase in government spending and increase in price index as negative indicators (the lower the better). Slavery was not measured. The postwar presidencies of Andrew Johnson and Grant, Harding, and Monroe rank best. See also Libertarian Views of United States Presidents. Quinnipiac University poll A Quinnipiac University poll, taken May 23-30, 2006, asked 1,534 registered American voters to pick the best and worst U.S. President of the last 61 years. *. "Thinking about the United States Presidents we have had since World War II – Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Senior, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, which one would you consider the best president?" "Which of these eleven presidents we have had since World War II would you consider the worst president - Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Senior, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush?" Washington College poll
Gallup poll A Gallup poll about presidential greatness, taken 7-10 February 2005, asked 1008 adults nationwide, "Who do you regard as the greatest United States president?" * ABC poll An ABC News poll about presidential greatness, taken 16-20 February 2000, asked 1012 adults nationwide, "Who do you think was the greatest American president?" * | |||||||||||
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