Our friend Stephen Moore gave us a heads-up about a new poll conducted by J.L. Partners that found Americans think Joe Biden is the worst President ever.
We wondered if perhaps the poll was as much a reflection of the sorry state of American education as it was an analysis of Biden’s presidency, until we noticed that it was limited to the “modern era” and the nine elected presidents from the last 55 years.
That means that Joe wasn’t compared to James Buchanan, whose failed presidency was arguably responsible for the Civil War, and who was so reviled after Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration he slipped out of Washington alone to return to his estate in Pennsylvania.
And let’s not forget that means Joe wasn’t compared to Warren G. Harding, who, like Joe, garnered a huge popular vote, only to be tarnished by scandal and corruption.
But it does mean Biden fared worse than Obama, who would have been our nominee for worst President ever for the James Buchanan-level of damage he did to the country.
So, when you look at the details of the poll it is certainly hard to argue with its findings.
About 14% of voters polled ranked Mr. Biden in the top two, while 44% placed him in the bottom two for a net score of negative 30, below Richard Nixon, who scored negative 25.
At the top of the list was Republican Ronald Reagan, (no surprise) who scored plus 30, followed by Democrat Barack Obama at plus 21 (oy vey big surprise), Democrat Bill Clinton at plus 1, and Republican George W. Bush at plus 1.
Voters were evenly split on Democrat Jimmy Carter, with 15% putting him in the top two and 15% in the bottom two for a score of zero.
He was followed by Republican George H.W. Bush, who was the first president to land underwater in the poll with a score of negative 1.
Not included in the poll was Republican Gerald Ford, who succeeded Nixon after his resignation in 1974 but lost to Mr. Carter in 1976.
What’s really quite amazing is that Biden fared worse than Richard Nixon in this very limited group of presidents.
Nixon was reviled by Democrats long before Watergate drove him from office. Yet 'Tricky Dicky' , who stepped down after it became known that he was involved in covering up the break-in and attempted bugging of Democrat headquarters by members of a group linked to his re-election campaign, is still more popular than Biden.
A big negative for Joe was his broad pardon of his son Hunter, convicted of gun and tax charges, reversing promises that he would do no such thing.
The poll found that more than half of American voters believed he was wrong to pardon his son. And it sent Biden's historically low approval rating dropping another four points, to 37 percent, according to the J.L. Partners survey.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a link to the cross tabs to see how the sample was constructed or weighted by party affiliation.
However, as one commentator noted, looking at Trump’s down votes compared to his up votes in this poll should give you an idea of the sampling that was used to get these results. Especially when you consider that Trump was just elected and won the popular vote as well as the electoral college, the poll shows Trump being more disliked than Biden. How could that be?
That result suggests that it was heavy on Democrats. So, the fact that Joe Biden still came in as the worst on the list is telling.
2024 Election
Joe Biden
Worst president ever
poll
Ronald Reagan
Jimmy Carter
Richard Nixon
Donald Trump
Hunter Biden pardon