YouGov/Yahoo News: Biden +9

[ProudModerate2]

How would you rate Trump?

Great 18%
Near Great 12%
Average 13%
Below Average 11%
Failure 43%

"Failure 43%."
LOL.
That's almost 50%. Wow.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Yeah, I also found Bush's huge level of "average" responses to be interesting. My guess is that a lot of people either a)forget the details of his presidency, or b)think he's a good person (especially compared to Trump) and don't want to say he was a poor president, but can't bring themselves to say he was near great either. Then there are also probably some Trumpian Republicans who have ambivalent feelings of the Bush-era GOP.

There might also be a generational disparity. Younger, Generation Z respondents who may have been around during Bush's tenure may not remember it very well in comparison to Obama and Trump.

I have heard this hypothesized as a difference in the attitudes between younger Gen Z people and older millennials, in that the latter remember the Bush years and are thus more loyal to the Democratic Party, whereas those that don't remember the Bush years seem to hold the Democratic Party in lower regard.

https://www.vox.com/2016/9/21/12963334/clinton-millennial-problem

That definitely seems accurate. I was between the ages of 8-16 during the Bush years, and I remember them very distinctly. They certainly shaped my politics of today. It was a miserable eight years that somehow are being matched by the not even four years yet of the Trump administration.

[Alben Barkley]

Candidate/Great/Near-Great/Average/Below-Average/Failure/DK

Donald Trump 18% 12% 13% 11% 43% 3%
Barack Obama 27% 18% 22% 8% 21% 3%
George W. Bush 7% 13% 42% 21% 13% 4%
Bill Clinton 8% 20% 36% 17% 16% 3%
Ronald Reagan 23% 19% 23% 14% 10% 10%
Jimmy Carter 14% 19% 33% 9% 12% 12%
John F. Kennedy 31% 32% 27% 3% 2% 6%
Dwight Eisenhower 18% 26% 27% 4% 1% 24%
Franklin D. Roosevelt 31% 29% 18% 5% 3% 15%
Abraham Lincoln 48% 27% 14% 3% 2% 7%
George Washington 40% 25% 19% 4% 2% 10%

Interesting to see these numbers split into quintiles instead of quartiles or halves. I enjoy seeing that Jimmy Carter scores higher on the "great"+"near-great" scale than Trump does. Also, Obama has by far the best scores of any living ex-president. I also enjoy seeing the number of people who have no idea what to make of Eisenhower.

Wow, Clinton’s popularity seems to have fallen off a cliff from what it once was.

Reagan doesn’t seem quite as deified as he once was either, though. Interesting.

[Alben Barkley]

Jimmy Carter did not have a better presidency than Bill Clinton....also 42% of people thought W. Bush's presidency was average? Do Republicans even believe that?

Jimmy is a better person, but yes Clinton hands down was the better president.

I imagine his declining popularity is the result primarily of both Hillary’s failure and the MeToo thing causing some people to re-evaluate him. Plus he’s just getting farther away from people’s memories. And as the Democrats have moved left, he isn’t as liked even among the party as he once was.

[Orser67]

Jimmy Carter did not have a better presidency than Bill Clinton....also 42% of people thought W. Bush's presidency was average? Do Republicans even believe that?

I imagine his declining popularity is the result primarily of both Hillary’s failure and the MeToo thing causing some people to re-evaluate him. Plus he’s just getting farther away from people’s memories. And as the Democrats have moved left, he isn’t as liked even among the party as he once was.

Imo most importantly, Hillary's run in 2016, and the fact that Bill served as a campaign surrogate, made Bill a more explicitly political figure, which tends to lower the favorables of public figures. Bill Clinton used to be most associated with the prosperity of the 1990s and with his largely non-partisan post-presidential activities (e.g. raising money in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake), but now he's most associated with his wife's recent, divisive failed presidential run.

I'd also add that Republicans moving to the right is also probably a factor.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Jimmy Carter did not have a better presidency than Bill Clinton....also 42% of people thought W. Bush's presidency was average? Do Republicans even believe that?

I imagine his declining popularity is the result primarily of both Hillary’s failure and the MeToo thing causing some people to re-evaluate him. Plus he’s just getting farther away from people’s memories. And as the Democrats have moved left, he isn’t as liked even among the party as he once was.

Imo most importantly, Hillary's run in 2016, and the fact that Bill served as a campaign surrogate, made Bill a more explicitly political figure, which tends to lower the favorables of public figures. Bill Clinton used to be most associated with the prosperity of the 1990s and with his largely non-partisan post-presidential activities (e.g. raising money in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake), but now he's most associated with his wife's recent, divisive failed presidential run.

I'd also add that Republicans moving to the right is also probably a factor.

Also it should be noted that the Republican Party made him and his entire family top public enemies during his presidency , as he was the one who finally ended the Reagan era. It just happened to have taken longer than they thought to cultivate that perception among non-Republicans. Their patience paid off in 2016.

[Calthrina950]

Jimmy Carter did not have a better presidency than Bill Clinton....also 42% of people thought W. Bush's presidency was average? Do Republicans even believe that?

I imagine his declining popularity is the result primarily of both Hillary’s failure and the MeToo thing causing some people to re-evaluate him. Plus he’s just getting farther away from people’s memories. And as the Democrats have moved left, he isn’t as liked even among the party as he once was.

Imo most importantly, Hillary's run in 2016, and the fact that Bill served as a campaign surrogate, made Bill a more explicitly political figure, which tends to lower the favorables of public figures. Bill Clinton used to be most associated with the prosperity of the 1990s and with his largely non-partisan post-presidential activities (e.g. raising money in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake), but now he's most associated with his wife's recent, divisive failed presidential run.

I'd also add that Republicans moving to the right is also probably a factor.

Also it should be noted that the Republican Party made him and his entire family top public enemies during his presidency , as he was the one who finally ended the Reagan era. It just happened to have taken longer than they thought to cultivate that perception among non-Republicans. Their patience paid off in 2016.

If you mean from the perspective of him ending twelve years of Republican occupancy of the White House, then yes. But from the perspective of ending Reagan-era policies and ideological outlook, then no. Even though Reagan has been dead for 16 years, our politics is still very much within the framework that he established. Progressive ideas are becoming more popular, but they haven't prevailed over those of the Republicans, at least yet.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Jimmy Carter did not have a better presidency than Bill Clinton....also 42% of people thought W. Bush's presidency was average? Do Republicans even believe that?

I imagine his declining popularity is the result primarily of both Hillary’s failure and the MeToo thing causing some people to re-evaluate him. Plus he’s just getting farther away from people’s memories. And as the Democrats have moved left, he isn’t as liked even among the party as he once was.

Imo most importantly, Hillary's run in 2016, and the fact that Bill served as a campaign surrogate, made Bill a more explicitly political figure, which tends to lower the favorables of public figures. Bill Clinton used to be most associated with the prosperity of the 1990s and with his largely non-partisan post-presidential activities (e.g. raising money in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake), but now he's most associated with his wife's recent, divisive failed presidential run.

I'd also add that Republicans moving to the right is also probably a factor.

Also it should be noted that the Republican Party made him and his entire family top public enemies during his presidency , as he was the one who finally ended the Reagan era. It just happened to have taken longer than they thought to cultivate that perception among non-Republicans. Their patience paid off in 2016.

If you mean from the perspective of him ending twelve years of Republican occupancy of the White House, then yes. But from the perspective of ending Reagan-era policies and ideological outlook, then no. Even though Reagan has been dead for 16 years, our politics is still very much within the framework that he established. Progressive ideas are becoming more popular, but they haven't prevailed over those of the Republicans, at least yet.

I did mean that he ended the twelve year streak.