- Nearly 100 historians and biographers rated past commanders in chief on 10 leadership qualities.
- Abraham Lincoln was voted the best US president.
- Donald Trump didn’t make the top 25 — he’s No. 41.
Historians agree: Abraham Lincoln was the best US president.
For C-SPAN’s most recent Presidential Historians Survey, conducted in 2021, nearly 100 historians and biographers rated the former US presidents.
The 2021 Presidential Historians Survey, which was released after Donald Trump’s first term in the White House, measured 10 qualities of presidential leadership: public persuasion, crisis leadership, economic management, moral authority, international relations, administrative skills, relations with Congress, vision, pursued equal justice for all, and performance within the context of his times.
Scores in each category were then averaged, and the 10 categories were given equal weighting in determining the presidents’ total scores.
After his first term, Donald Trump didn’t make the top 25 — he ranked at No. 41. Jimmy Carter also missed the top 25, coming in at No. 26.
C-SPAN normally releases its Presidential Historians Survey after a sitting president’s term. The 2021 survey did not include Joe Biden since he was still in office when it was conducted.
However, a C-SPAN spokesperson told Business Insider that the 2025 survey, which would have included Biden, has been postponed.
“Upon consultation with our survey’s advisory team of historians, C-SPAN has decided to postpone this cycle’s presidential leadership survey,” Robin Newton, C-SPAN’s media relations specialist, told Business Insider. “The consensus is that with a former president returning to office, conducting the survey now would turn it from historical analysis to punditry.”
A different presidential survey called the Presidential Greatness Project also ranked Lincoln as the best president, followed by Franklin D. Roosevelt at No. 2 and Washington at No. 3. Published in 2024 by Professor Brandon Rottinghaus from the University of Houston and Professor Justin S. Vaughn from Coastal Carolina University, the project surveyed 154 members of the American Political Science Association and other political scholars. The Presidential Greatness Project ranked Biden at 14th and Trump in last place at 45th.
Here are the top 25 presidents, according to historians surveyed by C-SPAN. The full list can be found here.
