In Survey For President's Day, 41% Of Independents Say Trump Is A 'Terrible' President- Only 12% Of The Same People Say That About Obama

digbysblog.blogspot

Kennedy took the top spot in these ratings thanks to the strongest bipartisan support of any modern president. Naturally, he had a high rating among Democrats (7.09), but he also received top marks from independents — 6.62, the highest any president earned from that group — and from Republicans (6.20). Kennedy’s rating among Republicans was the highest rating the opposite-party identifiers gave to any modern president. The next highest were Ronald Reagan’s (5.15) and George H.W. Bush’s (4.96) rating among Democrats.

Independents rated Kennedy highest (6.62), but they also held relatively positive views of Reagan (6.21) and Barack Obama (6.11).

Among partisans, Reagan was the highest-rated president among Republicans, with GOP identifiers giving him an average of 8.03. With a 7.20 rating, President Donald Trump earned the second-best score among Republicans, reinforcing the reality that GOP voters have rallied around him.

As for Democrats, they gave Obama a rating of 8.65, the highest for any Democratic president and the highest for any single president among a partisan group. Bill Clinton was second behind Obama among Democrats with 7.19, followed by Kennedy at 7.09.

Few would dispute that JFK and Reagan have worn well over the decades, more so than any of their modern colleagues, and the data in this survey confirm that.

Today’s extraordinarily high level of partisanship mainly explains why the two most polarizing presidents among Democratic and Republican respondents are the two most recent, Obama and Trump. The difference between the average rating among Democrats and Republicans for Obama was 5.18, the largest margin of any president. Trump was next, with a sizable difference of 5.06. Clinton and Reagan tied for a distant third with a partisan difference of 2.88.

Reflecting his scandal-driven exit from the White House, Richard Nixon earned the lowest score among all respondents, 3.80, with Democrats, Republicans, and independents all rating him lower than 5.0. Lyndon Johnson, chief prosecutor of an unpopular war in Vietnam, was not far above Nixon with an overall average of 4.17.

Fading public memories and generational replacement play some role in the rating of many modern presidents. Americans have fuzzy images of Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, and even George H.W. Bush despite the fact that many scholars view them as fair-to-good presidents. Generally speaking, the oldest respondents (age 55 and up) were less likely to respond “don’t know” when rating the presidents, particularly when rating the less recent presidents.

Trump earned the third-lowest overall mark among respondents, 4.20, and his 3.77 average among independents was the second worst, just above Nixon’s 3.70. Compounding Trump’s weak performance among independents was his exceptionally low rating among Democrats, 2.14, the worst mark for any president among any partisan cohort. For comparison, Republicans gave Obama an average rating of 3.47. 

That Democrats give the lowest ratings to Trump — lower even than Nixon — is remarkable, but so is the high evaluation of Trump among Republicans. This may be further evidence that the Trump brand and the Republican Party are increasingly synonymous, though Trump does not rate as highly among Republicans as Obama does among Democrats.

Another notable finding was that women routinely gave lower average scores to 10 of the 12 modern presidents. Only Obama and Jimmy Carter received higher average scores among women than men, although in some instances the differences by gender were very minor (Carter, Clinton, and George W. Bush). Curiously, the president with the largest gender gap in mean rating was Dwight Eisenhower, who received a score of 5.73 among men and 4.32 among women, for a difference of 1.41. Trump had the second-largest gender gap, 0.95.

It seems a little bit surprising that Trump rates so high --- just above Nixon and Johnson. It's surprising since he's already the greatest leader the world has ever known. Just ask him.

*Keep in mind that Reagan didn't have such great ratings until Republicans led by Grover Norquist started the "Reagan Legacy Project" to turn him into an icon. If they could have put giant Reagan statues in every big city they would have. As it is they just systematically went about renaming airports, roads, building etc after him and creating a hagiography worthy of Alexander the Great.

One huge problem with that survey is that Donald Trump i only one year into his first term. The poll is a sampling of 1004 adults online

I would like to see a reporter ask Trump or Sarah Sanders about this poll. Just to see the spin. 

I can't believe those ratings for Trump are as high as they are.

Here is another way of describing it.  The responders were asked to rate these presidents from 1 to 10, 10 being "excellent" and 1 being "terrible". 41% of the people gave Trump a rating of 1 out of 10, the worst possible rating.  Trump escapes last place on the overall list because some Republicans gave him an "excellent" rating. 

Trump comes in dead last in the view of presidential historians:

Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan are up, Bill Clinton is down and Donald Trump is off to a historically bad start — and the greats, meanwhile, remain the greats.

That was the finding of the 2018 Presidents & Executive Politics Presidential Greatness Survey , released Monday by professors Brandon Rottinghaus of the University of Houston and Justin S. Vaughn of Boise State University. The survey results, ranking American presidents from best to worst, were based on responses from 170 current and recent members of the Presidents and Executive Politics section of the American Political Science Association.

Obama moved from 18th in 2014, when the survey was last conducted, to 8th in the current survey. Reagan jumped from 11th to 9th. Bill Clinton, meanwhile, fell from 8th to 13th — perhaps as a result of heightened attention to sexual misconduct in the midst of the #MeToo movement.

Trump came in dead last.

The top seven remained unchanged, with Abraham Lincoln holding the top spot, followed in order by George Washington, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower.

Even among self-identified Republicans and conservatives, Trump came in 40th out of 44 (while Trump is officially the 45th president, the survey did not count Grover Cleveland’s non-consecutive terms separately, so the ranking runs from 1-44).

Washington received the top spot from Republicans and conservatives, while liberals, Democrats and independents chose Lincoln.

Franklin Roosevelt, the architect of the New Deal and the father of the modern Democratic Party, continues to enjoy high marks across the political spectrum. Reagan, on the other hand, who ushered in the modern era of small-government conservatism, receives high ranks from conservatives and Republicans but falls in the teens for Democrats and liberals. Obama sees the reverse.

Trump closely follows James Buchanan, America’s 15th president, who presided over the increasingly explosive national debate over slavery, and who saw the Union split apart after the election of his successor, Lincoln.

politico

.

I seriously doubt that Trump's pole position will change in the future.   He'll always be dead last.

Wrong. That was a survey of political scientists, not historians.  And I consider any survey that lists FDR as anything other than a traitor to be worthless. The same with Hussein Obama

From the article the data showing who responded is very enlightening

. The results showed that 57.2% (95/166) of respondents were 
Democrats, while 12.7% were Republicans (21/166), 27.1% were Independents (45/166), and 
3% (5/166) selected Other as their option. The second question asked whether the respondent 
ideologically considered themselves to be liberal, somewhat liberal, moderate, somewhat 
conservative, or conservative. The results of this question showed that 32.5% (54/166) consider 
themselves ideologically liberal, while 25.9% (43/166) consider themselves somewhat liberal, 
and 24.1% consider themselves moderate (40/166). Only 5.4% (9/166) consider themselves 
ideologically conservative, while 12% (20/166) say they are somewhat conservative.

Wrong. That was a survey of political scientists, not historians.

I'm not sure of the distinction here given that these specific folks study Presidents and the Executive branch:

Respondents were current and recent members of the Presidents & Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association

.

And even the conservatives ranked Trump as 40th out of 44.    That begs the question of who they possibly think could be worse.

Where in the article did you find this?

Sounds like you have a reading comprehension problem.    Read the article, read the survey the article cites, or read the sections above which I highlighted in bold.

How in the fuck was FDR a traitor? You realize he presided over nearly the entirety of WW2, you know, that war where we played a significant role in defeating two of the greatest threats the world has ever seen? You know the one that ushered in America's decades of global dominance? Lemme guess, he was a traitor because he actually tried to do something about the Great Depression? 

Feel free to whine to the seeder, but I suspect John found my comment exactly on topic.    Don't blame your reading comprehension problems on someone else.

FDR implemented marxist Fascism over the Constitution

He made a deal with Stalin to give the Soviets control over half of Europe

This is a group of crazy left wingers who in 1984, went 90% for Mondale, with more members supporting left wing extreme candidates than Reagan, who won 49 states.

Might as well ask the American communist party to rank American PResidents. 

All this poll tells you is how extreme leftists rank the Presidents.

It's worth as much as used toilet paper. 

All this poll tells you is how extreme leftists rank the Presidents.

Including the conservatives who ranked Trump as 40th out of 44?

A few hundred years from now as archaeologists are digging up the debris of the American civilization they'll encounter evidence of a nameless president referred to only as "# 45", who oversaw the sudden decline of the civilization.    All pictures and other evidence of who this man was will have been erased from the pages of history.    Archaeologists will continue to debate whether such an incompetent, greedy and sociopathic president really existed (or ever could have been elected), but they did find evidence of a US leader who colluded with a hostile foreign power to bring about the end of that civilization.

Trump is an absolute shit president, it isn't even a question. He literally cannot do anything right no matter how obvious the right choice is. Nazis, should be the easiest thing in the world to say the right thing about, fucked that up like 3 times before he finally was able to read the correct statement someone wrote for him. The fact that some people actually think he is doing a good job just tells me that a) America is fucked, and b) some people have standards that are so low that a dried out dog turd would satisfy them.

You seem to have Trump confused with Hussein Obama, the anti-American traitor we are finally free of.