The Trump presidential ranking in the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project placed him last among the 45 presidents evaluated, with an average score of 10.92 out of 100. That supports a specific statement about an expert survey, rather than an uncontested verdict on every aspect of his presidency.
A social-media question asking whether Trump is America’s worst president also invokes the country’s 250th anniversary. The historical dates, the survey’s methods and the period being assessed all need to remain clear before readers are invited to agree.
What the Trump presidential ranking found
The project was led by political scientists Brandon Rottinghaus of the University of Houston and Justin Vaughn of Coastal Carolina University. The university announced the findings on February 15, 2024.
Abraham Lincoln ranked first, followed by Franklin D. Roosevelt and George Washington. At the bottom, Trump ranked below James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson. These positions describe the survey’s aggregate results.
The project’s website and linked white paper explain that respondents rated overall presidential greatness on a scale from zero to 100. The researchers averaged those ratings and ordered presidents by their scores.
A score of 10.92 is therefore an average rating. It does not mean that 10.92% of Americans approved of Trump, or that the remaining population agreed he was the worst president.
The participant count needs qualification
The supplied caption’s figure of 191 has an identifiable source: the University of Houston announcement says 191 surveys were completed. However, the project’s white paper reports 154 usable responses from 525 invitations, with a 29.3% response rate.
Both documents describe online fieldwork conducted from November 15 through December 31, 2023. The materials reviewed do not explicitly reconcile the two totals. This review cannot confirm why they differ.
The careful approach is to attribute each figure to its document. It would be inaccurate to dismiss 191 as an invented number, but presenting it without acknowledging the white paper’s different usable-response count would leave out relevant methodological context.
Expert assessments are different from public opinion
The project invited specialists in presidential politics and related scholarship. It was not a random survey of the American electorate, and its findings should not be described as the percentage of Americans agreeing with the supplied question.
The project website lists 95 Democratic respondents, 15 Republicans and 44 independents or others. That composition is relevant context when assessing an expert panel; it does not, by itself, establish that every answer resulted from party loyalty.
Different surveys also produce different orders. C-SPAN’s 2021 survey placed Trump 41st among 44 former presidents. Its 142 participating historians and professional observers evaluated ten leadership characteristics, rather than using the project’s single overall greatness rating. Keeping the Trump presidential ranking attached to its source prevents those different findings from being confused.
C-SPAN ranked Trump last in moral authority and administrative skills, while his positions in public persuasion and economic management were higher. Those results illustrate why an overall position and individual performance categories should not be treated as identical findings.
The anniversary does not mean 250 years of presidents
July 4, 2026, marked 250 years since the Declaration of Independence. George Washington took the presidential oath on April 30, 1789. The modern constitutional presidency therefore did not begin in 1776.
Describing the country as 250 years old uses the independence anniversary. Describing an uninterrupted 250-year history of the constitutional presidency would conflate two different timelines.
What remains a matter of judgment
The White House disagrees. In September, spokesperson Davis Ingle predicted a highly successful Trump legacy, The Guardian reported.
Hourly Times’ analysis of presidential leadership standards examines the distinction between documented findings and broader political judgments. Readers can apply different criteria while still accurately describing what a particular survey measured.
The Trump presidential ranking discussed here predates his return to office. It cannot assess the completed record of his second term. Any future ranking would need its own date, methods and evidence before being reported as an updated historical assessment.
