After political experts in a New York Times survey showed President Donald Trump ranked at the very bottom on a scale of all the U.S. presidents, a number of commentators on Twitter — including Trump critics — came to the president's defense, Mediaite reported Monday.
The survey was held among 170 members of the American Political Science Association's Presidents and Executive Politics section, The New York Times reported.
Each expert who took the poll was asked to rate each president on a 0-100 scale, with 0 meaning failure and 100 meaning greatness. The scores were then averaged, the poll report said.
Trump placed at the bottom, in 44th place. William Henry Harrison, James Buchanan, and Trump were the bottom three in the survey.
FiveThirtyEight pollster Nate Silver wrote on Twitter that the result "speaks poorly" of the scientists in the poll, since Trump has only been on the job for one year.
CNN's Harry Enten also critiqued the results, tweeting:
Ian Milhiser, the justice editor for ThinkProgress, said the survey was unfair.
The top three were Abraham Lincoln at number 1, followed by George Washington and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Among recent presidents, Barack Obama placed at number 8, George W. Bush was at number 30, and Bill Clinton was at number 13.
The poll also was conducted in 2014. Since that time, Reagan improved 2 spots, Obama rose 10 spots, and Bush rose 5. Clinton saw the second-biggest decline, dropping 5 spots. Only Andrew Jackson declined more, down 6.
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