Ranking the US Presidents

I don’t like to talk politics, but presidents have been on my mind lately for some reason. So, I figured, what characteristics of a president or his circumstances make him better? And what is the definitely ranking of US presidents?

Wikipedia has a nice comprehensive list of academic rankings of US presidents, sourced from surveying historians of all political leanings. They include the standard mainstream Siena College and C-SPAN surveys, among others, and the twenty represented surveys span from 1948 to 2018.

The thing is, however, due to the age of some of these surveys, not all rankings had the same amount of presidents and thus cannot be compared in terms of ranking alone. I thus devised a ‘Rank Percentile’ for each president, factoring in how favorable a president was ranked out of all men who had become president up to that time.

The rank percentile was simply dividing the numerical rank of a president in a survey over the total number of presidents listed in that survey. Then, I subtracted the resulting fraction from 1 to yield the rank percentile, ranging from 0 (the worst president) to just under 1 (the best president). Finally, I averaged the amount for each president for every survey, to yield a final comprehensive ranking of 1 – 44. Basically, the higher the rank percentile ranking, the better-regarded the president.

Here is the list of all US Presidents, ranked best to worst :

Overall Rank	President	Average Rank Percentile Across all Surveys
1	Abraham Lincoln	0.960
2	Franklin D. Roosevelt	0.944
3	George Washington	0.935
4	Theodore Roosevelt	0.881
5	Thomas Jefferson	0.879
6	Harry S. Truman	0.827
7	Woodrow Wilson	0.812
8	Dwight D. Eisenhower	0.781
9	Andrew Jackson	0.738
10	John F. Kennedy	0.702
11	James K. Polk	0.688
12	Lyndon B. Johnson	0.677
13	Barack Obama	0.677
14	James Madison	0.669
15	John Adams	0.666
16	Ronald Reagan	0.653
17	James Monroe	0.649
18	Bill Clinton	0.580
19	Grover Cleveland	0.567
20	William McKinley	0.565
21	John Quincy Adams	0.537
22	George H. W. Bush	0.490
23	William Howard Taft	0.471
24	Martin Van Buren	0.408
25	Rutherford B. Hayes	0.371
26	Gerald R. Ford	0.363
27	Jimmy Carter	0.356
28	Chester A. Arthur	0.308
29	James A. Garfield	0.304
30	Calvin Coolidge	0.277
31	Benjamin Harrison	0.275
32	George W. Bush	0.269
33	Richard M. Nixon	0.269
34	Herbert Hoover	0.263
35	Zachary Taylor	0.234
36	Ulysses S. Grant	0.221
37	John Tyler	0.158
39	Millard Fillmore	0.144
40	Franklin Pierce	0.079
41	Andrew Johnson	0.076
42	Warren G. Harding	0.033
43	James Buchanan	0.030
44	Donald Trump	0.023

Remember, the higher the rank percentile, the ‘better’ the president.

Now, there must be some category separating levels of good-ness here- education? Length and number of terms? Approval rating? Seemingly unrelated physical characteristics that could influence appearance/charisma? Something else quantifiable? Quite possibly.

Remember, correlation does not imply causation. But I figured it would be fun either way.

Before we get into it, here are some quantifiable factors that, I found, had NO significant relationship with a president’s average historical ranking:

• Percentage of electoral or popular votes in their successful presidential election
• Age at start fo presidency
• Height
• Weight
• BMI
• Degree of presence of facial hair (given by Wikipedia as having a beard, mustache, or sideburns)
• Baldness
• Eye Color

So, let’s look at some variables that do seemingly separate the best from the worst- starting with some basic categorical ones:

As listed on Wikipedia

This one seems obvious, since presidents who won more elections would be more popular and thus usually more favorably viewed by historians, and those who weren’t elected (<1 terms) wouldn’t have been chosen by the people so would have not been as effective or popular, not to mention often not being prepared for the role so suddenly if their president died.

Curiously, it seems that the presidents who served between one and two terms were unusually favorably viewed, almost the same as two-term presidents. This does make sense however, when you take into account the presidents who took over a previous president’s role (e.g. Teddy Roosevelt, LBJ) or the ones who died partway into their second term (e.g. JFK, Lincoln). Either they must be popular enough to be re-elected after a partial term, or they did enough big things that someone decided it was worth the trouble to assassinate them.

And just to be clear, the only 2+ term president was FDR, though in theory a president today can serve up to 10 total years.

Anyways, let’s move on.

I only included parties with 2+ presidents. George Washington was technically non-partisan so I excluded him, thereby making John Adams the only Federalist president and excluding that party from this chart; I also excluded John Tyler (Independent) and Andrew Johnson (National Union).

*Only including universities that produced more than one president.

Just to make it clear I’m atheist myself but do not wish to prove anything with this graph nor do I want to antagonize anyone. Religion should unify, not divide!

I was also wondering, did earlier presidents tend to be viewed as better than later ones? Looks like the first few Founding Fathers were ranked relatively highly but after that not so much:

p = .7

One very good predictor of general ranking is a president’s length of presidency.

p = .0000008; r = .615

Perhaps this shouldn’t be too surprising, as presidents who are popular will generally be re-elected. Presidents with more time to make an impact will also make a large impact, apparently. However, one can see the spread of ranking within those standard one and two term presidencies, at the two clusters of points at ~1400 days (one full term) and ~2800 days (two full terms). It seems that the outliers of the less-than-one-term presidents like William Henry Harrison’s one month ineffectual presidency, and FDR, are the ones really driving this correlation.

Even so, the two-termers seem to generally be ranked better than the one-termers at least at a glance.

As a possible extension of getting things done more leading to a more favorable view in history, the number of Supreme Court Justices a presidents appoints over his tenure also correlates fairly well with his historical ranking average:

p = .0002; r = .527

There’s also data on many official approval presidential polls for the last 14 presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt, and approval rating too does seem to be a pretty good predictor within the range of approvals represented.

p = .018; r = .617. Note the x axis.

p = .03; r = .313.
No significant correlation was found between number of executive orders (or orders per year) and approval rating (p = .3).

Finally- can you buy greatness with money? At a certain point it seems so. Many of the greatest presidents (including Lincoln) had a net worth under $1 million in today’s money, but it seems with the richer multi-millionaires, the more the better. There is one notable billionaire outlier to this positive trend, of course, but cutting that outlier out yields a nice positive correlation between net worth and ranking.

p = .003; r = .43.

In case you’re wondering, that top-right dot is actually George Washington himself- with a net worth of an estimated $587 million 2016 dollars! It seems the richest presidents have sandwiched the rest.

Anyways, here’s the appendix with some other curious rankings:

Presidents with the most and least total popular votes, as well as the most and least electoral votes:

MOST	President	Total Popular Vote	Elections
1	Barack Obama	135,414,311	2
2	George W. Bush	112,500,720	2
3	Franklin D. Roosevelt	103,500,786	4
4	Ronald Reagan	98,358,702	2
5	Bill Clinton	92,309,931	2
6	Richard M. Nixon	78,952,493	2
7	Joe Biden	75,813,935*	1
8	Dwight D. Eisenhower	69,654,709	2
9	Donald Trump	62,984,828	1
10	George H. W. Bush	48,886,597	1

*As of 11/09/2020

LEAST	President	Total Popular Vote	Elections
1	John Adams	35,726	1
2	George Washington	72,361	2
3	John Quincy Adams	113,142	1
4	Thomas Jefferson	145,440	2
5	James Monroe	163,935	2
6	James Madison	265,163	2
7	Martin Van Buren	763,291	1
8	William Henry Harrison	1,275,583	1
9	James K. Polk	1,339,570	1
10	Andrew Jackson	1,345,541	2

MOST	President	Total Electoral Votes	Elections
1	Franklin D. Roosevelt	1,876	4
2	Ronald Reagan	1,014	2
3	Dwight D. Eisenhower	899	2
4	Richard M. Nixon	821	2
5	Bill Clinton	749	2
6	Woodrow Wilson	712	2
7	Barack Obama	697	2
8	William McKinley	563	2
9	George W. Bush	557	2
10	Ulysses S. Grant	500	2

LEAST	President	Total Electoral Votes	Elections
1	John Adams	71	1
2	John Quincy Adams	84	1
3	Zachary Taylor	163	1
4	Martin Van Buren	170	1
5	James K. Polk	170	1
6	James Buchanan	174	1
7	Rutherford B. Hayes	185	1
8	George Washington	201	2
9	James Garfield	214	1
10	Benjamin Harrison	233	1

Colleges graduated from by presidents:

Institution	Number of President Graduates
Harvard	8
[No University Degree]	8
Yale	4
William and Mary	3
Union College	2
University of Pennsylvania	2
West Point	2
Albany Law School	1
Amherst	1
Bowdoin	1
Dickinson	1
Duke	1
Eureka	1
Johns Hopkins	1
Miami University	1
Ohio Central	1
Princeton	1
Spalding	1
Stanford	1
Syracuse Law	1
Texas State	1
UNC	1
Williams	1

And now, time for body shaming (weighed at time of presidency, except Joe Biden):

	President	BMI	Weight Class	Height (inches)	Weight (lbs)
1 (fattest)	William Howard Taft	46.55	Obese	71.7	340
2	Grover Cleveland	36.40	Obese	70.9	260
3	William McKinley	31.23	Obese	66.9	199
4	Chester A. Arthur	30.38	Obese	72.0	224
5	Theodore Roosevelt	30.06	Obese	70.1	210
6	Donald Trump	29.71	Overweight	75.2	239
7	Bill Clinton	28.62	Overweight	74.0	223
8	John Quincy Adams	27.14	Overweight	67.3	175
9	James Buchanan	26.82	Overweight	72.0	198
10	James K. Polk	26.37	Overweight	68.1	174
11	Martin Van Buren	26.35	Overweight	66.1	164
12	Rutherford B. Hayes	26.22	Overweight	68.5	175
13	George W. Bush	26.15	Overweight	71.7	191
14	Gerald R. Ford	25.77	Overweight	72.0	190
15	Zachary Taylor	25.76	Overweight	68.1	170
16	Benjamin Harrison	25.71	Overweight	66.1	160
17	Millard Fillmore	25.69	Overweight	69.0	174
18	Herbert Hoover	25.60	Overweight	71.7	187
19	James Monroe	25.60	Overweight	72.0	189
20	George H. W. Bush	25.16	Overweight	74.0	196
21	Andrew Johnson	24.96	Healthy Weight	70.0	174
22	James A. Garfield	24.92	Healthy Weight	72.0	184
23	Harry S. Truman	24.73	Healthy Weight	68.9	167
24	Lyndon B. Johnson	24.61	Healthy Weight	75.6	200
25	William Henry Harrison	24.55	Healthy Weight	68.1	162
26	Joe Biden	24.55	Healthy Weight	72.0	181
27	Ronald Reagan	24.52	Healthy Weight	72.8	185
28	Dwight D. Eisenhower	24.21	Healthy Weight	70.5	171
29	Franklin D. Roosevelt	24.12	Healthy Weight	74.0	188
30	Richard M. Nixon	23.96	Healthy Weight	71.7	175
31	Barack Obama	23.85	Healthy Weight	72.8	180
32	Woodrow Wilson	23.80	Healthy Weight	70.9	170
33	Ulysses S. Grant	23.64	Healthy Weight	68.1	156
34	John Adams	23.54	Healthy Weight	66.9	150
35	Warren G. Harding	23.43	Healthy Weight	72.0	173
36	Jimmy Carter	23.16	Healthy Weight	69.7	160
37	John F. Kennedy	22.93	Healthy Weight	72.8	173
38	George Washington	22.47	Healthy Weight	74.0	175
39	Thomas Jefferson	22.09	Healthy Weight	74.4	174
40	Abraham Lincoln	21.92	Healthy Weight	76.0	180
41	John Tyler	21.70	Healthy Weight	72.0	160
42	Calvin Coolidge	21.19	Healthy Weight	70.1	148
43	Franklin Pierce	20.61	Healthy Weight	70.1	144
44	Andrew Jackson	18.55	Healthy Weight	72.8	140
45 (skinniest)	James Madison	17.07	Underweight	64.2	100

Poor James Madison, eat some more man. You did burn all those calories with the big brain energy of writing the Constitution though, so you get a pass.

And now, for the most cryptic chart of them all, definitely not suffering from n = 1 syndrome on any of its variables:

Anyways, keep on being presidential, all of you. See y’all next time!