Americans believe that President Joe Biden will be remembered as a particularly bad president relative to his predecessors, according to survey results from Gallup released last week.
Biden was ranked “below average” or “poor” by some 57% of respondents to the survey, outweighing the 19% of respondents who believe he was an “above average” or “outstanding” commander-in-chief, while 26% think he will be remembered as “average” by history.
When asked to rank nine other presidents in the same manner, Biden placed lower than every other predecessor with the exception of Richard Nixon: the former had a net disapproval rating of 35 percentage points, while the latter had a net disapproval of 42 percentage points.
President John F. Kennedy received the highest net approval, followed by President Ronald Reagan, President Barack Obama, President George H.W. Bush, and President Jimmy Carter.
President-Elect Donald Trump meanwhile received a net disapproval of 4 percentage points for his first term. The survey results from Gallup said his presidency was especially polarizing.
“Among Republican presidents, Trump receives the most sharply polarized ratings, even more so than Biden does among Democratic presidents,” Gallup said. “Republicans believe Trump is on par with Reagan as having the best presidential legacy. In contrast, Democrats believe history will judge Trump’s first term worse than Nixon’s presidency. More independents expect Trump to receive a negative than positive evaluation, but independents rate Nixon worse.”
Republican and Democratic respondents were divided on how they think history will remember the two most recent presidents: some 85% of Democrats believe that Trump will have a “below average” or “poor” legacy even as 93% of Republicans believe the same about Biden.
“Americans do not expect history to be kind when it judges Biden’s presidency. Right now, he is evaluated similarly to Nixon, who resigned from the White House amid the Watergate scandal,” Gallup continued in the results. “Biden’s fellow Democrats are less enthusiastic about his presidency than they are about other recent Democratic presidents, and Biden is the only recent Democratic president who currently has a net-negative evaluation among independents.”
