Political Scientists Fail President Trump

The political science professors who run an annual poll rating all the American presidents just released their yearly survey and rated the current president dead last. The part of the study that has garnered the most attention is the following passage:

“In the current polarized political climate, we thought it would be interesting to ask which presidents were considered by presidency experts to be the most polarizing. To do so, we asked respondents to identify up to five individual presidents they believed were the most polarizing, and then rank order them with the first president being the most polarizing, the second as next most polarizing, and so on. We then calculated how many times a president was identified as well as their average ranking. The results of this question can be seen in the table below. Donald Trump is by far the most polarizing of the ranked presidents earning a 1.6 average (1 is a ‘most polarizing’ ranking).”

What has gotten considerably less attention is the next line: “Lincoln is the second most polarizing president of those presidents ranked.” He is also the one the political science professors rank as the greatest president.

Here is their top 10:

1. Abraham Lincoln
2. George Washington
3. FDR
4. Teddy Roosevelt
5. Thomas Jefferson
6. Harry Truman
7. Dwight D. Eisenhower
8. Barack Obama
9. Ronald Reagan
10. LBJ

Nevertheless, the ratings are interesting reading for quite another reason: They put Ronald Reagan in the top 10, behind Barack Obama, to be sure, but given the composition of the group doing the rankings, it’s amazing that he made even that cut.

The survey was conducted by Brandon Rottinghaus, of the University of Houston and Justin S. Vaughn, of Boise State University. Of Rottinghaus, one of his students on Rate My Professor wrote, “I am a moderately conservative person, and even though Professor Rottinghaus is more liberal he is very polite and respectful.”

The authors of the survey asked respondents two key questions: “The first asked which political party the respondent considered themselves a part of. 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.”

Nevertheless, the ratings are interesting reading for quite another reason: They put Ronald Reagan in the top 10, behind Barack Obama, to be sure, but given the composition of the group doing the rankings, it’s amazing that he made even that cut.

The study, or poll, contains other anomalies: For example, LBJ rarely makes the top 10 on anybody’s list, even bringing up the rear, and the mostly, as we have seen, liberal poll respondents even rated Bill Clinton more highly than JFK.

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