The 2024 edition of the "Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey" got released, in a nod to tradition, on Presidents Day, which this year, in case you forgot already, was observed February 19. This is a project of the American Political Science Association. Founded in 1903, the APSA is regarded as the leading professional organization for the study of political science and serves more than 11,000 members in more than 100 countries.

Recent professional interest in rating U.S. presidents dates from the Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., poll of 1948. Schlesinger solicited the opinions of fifty-five "experts," the majority of whom were professional historians. The findings were subsequently published in Life magazine and were quickly embraced by the press as representing the collective judgment of historians everywhere. Schlesinger repeated the exercise fourteen years later, this time surveying seventy-five experts.

In both those polls the top five ranking presidents were Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Thomas Jefferson. The bottom two were Ulysses S. Grant and Warren G. Harding.

Respondents to this year’s survey included current and recent members of the Presidents & Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association as well as scholars who had recently published peer-reviewed academic research in key related scholarly journals or academic presses. 525 respondents were invited to participate, and 154 usable responses were received, yielding a 29.3% response rate.

On the survey's 0-100 scale of "overall greatness," a rating of 50 means a president was average, while zero means a president is considered a failure. Only the top three presidents — Abraham Lincoln at No. 1, followed by Franklin D. Roosevelt and then George Washington — scored above 90. The drop-off was sharp from there, with no one else above an 80 rating. Roughly half the presidents were rated below 50.

The results of this year’s ranking are similar to the results from previous surveys. Abraham Lincoln again tops the list (95.03 average), followed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (90.83), George Washington (90.32), Teddy Roosevelt (78.58), Thomas Jefferson (77.53), Harry Truman (75.34), Barack Obama (73.8), and Dwight Eisenhower (73.73).

The most notable changes in this ordering are Franklin Delano Roosevelt moving up to #2 from the third spot last year, and Dwight Eisenhower falling back to #8 from #6 last year. The bottom of the rankings is also relatively stable. Donald Trump rates lowest (10.92), behind James Buchanan (16.71), Andrew Johnson (21.56), Franklin Pierce (24.6), William Henry Harrison (26.01), and Warren Harding (27.76).

"While partisanship and ideology don't tend to make a major difference overall, there are a few distinctions worth noting," said political scientists Brandon Rottinghaus of the University of Houston and Justin S. Vaughn of Coastal Carolina University, who managed this year's survey as those in 2015 and 2018. “Experts who self-identified as conservatives rated President Joe Biden No. 30, while liberals put him 13th and moderates ranked him 20th. All three of those same groups ranked Donald Trump, whose presidency was marked by his flouting of historical norms, in the bottom five.”

"There are also other president assessments where partisan polarization is evident — Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Obama, and Biden — but interestingly not for Bill Clinton," the survey's authors said. Thirsty for more? The following two links are for, respectively, the NPR news posting describing the survey ("In historians' Presidents Day survey, Biden vs. Trump is not a close call") and a white paper by the survey directors ("Official Results of the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey") which includes the ratings and rankings for all 45 presidents.