Trump ranks as worst president in US history in new academics poll

Donald Trump isn’t just the first current or former president in US history to ever face criminal charges.

Now, he is making history in another way.

According to a new poll, Mr Trump has now been labelled as the worst president that the United States has ever seen.

The third instalment of the “Presidental Greatness Project”, by University of Houston political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus and Coastal Carolina University political science professor Justin Vaughn, asked academics to rank each of the 45 people who have served as president all the way from George Washington to Joe Biden.

The survey is based on 154 responses from scholars across multiple disciplines, all of whom, in some way or another, engage in presidential politics through their work.

Previous surveys were released in 2015 and 2018, with respondents this year asked to rank all those who have served time as president on a scale 0-100 – with 0 being failure and 100 being great.

Mr Trump ranked in the very last place, scoring just 10.9/100 – the same spot he occupied in the previous survey (he was not included in the first survey, which was conducted during Barack Obama’s presidency).

He was also awarded “most polarising” president in the poll.

Meanwhile, Abraham Lincoln stood at the top of the presidential rankings, as the country’s greatest president, with an average score of 93.9/100.

Franklin D. Roosevelt came in at number two, followed by the nation’s first president, George Washington. Fourth place went to Theodore Roosevelt and fifth to Thomas Jefferson.

Respondents were able to disclose their own political leanings, which produced an interesting insight into how the presidents fared between differing parties.

Donald Trump at a campaign rally