Historians Survey Results Category
Performance Within Context of Times
President's Name | 2017 Final Scores | Category Rankings | 2017 Overall Rankings | ||
2017 | 2009 | 2000 | |||
George Washington | 97.7 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
Abraham Lincoln | 97.1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Franklin D. Roosevelt | 92.3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
Theodore Roosevelt | 85.4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
Harry S. Truman | 80.7 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 |
Thomas Jefferson | 78.6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 7 |
Dwight D. Eisenhower | 77.2 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 5 |
Ronald Reagan | 74.1 | 8 | 7 | 12 | 9 |
John F. Kennedy | 72.5 | 9 | 11 | 11 | 8 |
Woodrow Wilson | 71.1 | 10 | 10 | 7 | 11 |
James Monroe | 69.9 | 11 | 13 | 16 | 13 |
James K. Polk | 68.6 | 12 | 12 | 10 | 14 |
Andrew Jackson | 68.1 | 13 | 9 | 8 | 18 |
Lyndon B. Johnson | 68.0 | 14 | 14 | 13 | 10 |
Barack Obama | 67.5 | 15 | NA | NA | 12 |
James Madison | 66.4 | 16 | 18 | 18 | 17 |
William J. Clinton | 65.9 | 17 | 16 | 21 | 15 |
William McKinley | 65.4 | 18 | 15 | 14 | 16 |
John Adams | 64.6 | 19 | 17 | 15 | 19 |
George H. W. Bush | 62.0 | 20 | 19 | 20 | 20 |
Ulysses S. Grant | 58.0 | 21 | 25 | 33 | 22 |
John Quincy Adams | 57.6 | 22 | 22 | 19 | 21 |
Grover Cleveland | 56.7 | 23 | 20 | 17 | 23 |
William Howard Taft | 54.6 | 24 | 23 | 23 | 24 |
Gerald R. Ford | 53.8 | 25 | 21 | 22 | 25 |
Calvin Coolidge | 51.0 | 26 | 24 | 27 | 27 |
James A. Garfield | 47.3 | 27 | 31 | 30 | 29 |
Rutherford B. Hayes | 47.0 | 28 | 32 | 25 | 32 |
James Earl Carter Jr. | 46.9 | 29 | 28 | 24 | 26 |
Zachary Taylor | 46.5 | 30 | 26 | 28 | 31 |
Benjamin Harrison | 46.2 | 31 | 29 | 29 | 30 |
Chester A. Arthur | 45.9 | 32 | 27 | 26 | 35 |
Martin Van Buren | 44.5 | 33 | 30 | 31 | 34 |
Richard M. Nixon | 44.0 | 34 | 33 | 32 | 28 |
George W. Bush | 43.3 | 35 | 36 | NA | 33 |
John Tyler | 38.9 | 36 | 34 | 35 | 39 |
Millard Fillmore | 38.4 | 37 | 35 | 34 | 37 |
William Henry Harrison | 37.1 | 38 | 39 | 38 | 38 |
Herbert Hoover | 36.6 | 39 | 37 | 36 | 36 |
Warren G. Harding | 33.2 | 40 | 38 | 37 | 40 |
Franklin Pierce | 28.8 | 41 | 40 | 40 | 41 |
Andrew Johnson | 26.3 | 42 | 41 | 39 | 42 |
James Buchanan | 20.4 | 43 | 42 | 41 | 43 |
Survey Links
Individual Leadership Characteristics
Resource Links
- Video on C-SPAN's Historians Survey on Presidential Leadership
- Watch the Washington Journal segment on the survey
- View full results from C-SPAN's 2017 Survey of Presidential Leadership
- View full results from C-SPAN's 2009 Survey of Presidential Leadership
- View full results from C-SPAN's 2000 Survey of Presidential Leadership
- Compare category rankings from all three C-SPAN surveys