Rasmussen Poll calls Donald Trump both the best- and worst- president of the last 30 years: In a President’s Day poll, Rasmussen Reports found that more than a third of respondents consider Donald Trump the best president of the last five. But even more, respondents said that Trump was the worst president in that time frame.
Donald Trump Wins and Losses an Important Poll
On Monday, on the occasion of President’s Day, the right-leaning polling outfit Rasmussen Reports issued a new poll asking respondents who was the best and worst president in the last 30 years.
The answer to both questions was Donald Trump.
When asked about the best president of the last 30 years, which comprises the last five presidencies, 36 percent of Rasmussen’s respondents answered Trump, with Barack Obama coming in second with 30 percent and George W. Bush third. But when asked about the worst president in that time frame, 41 percent called Trump the worst, followed by President Biden with 39 percent. Obama was third, followed by Bush and Clinton.
There were, naturally, big partisan divides over who chose which presidents, with Republicans much more likely to name Donald Trump as the best president and Biden as the worst.
The survey also found that about 20 percent of American adults consider President’s Day “one of our nation’s most important holidays,” while 26 percent call it “one of our least important holidays.”
Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll Monday found that 46 percent of likely voters approve of President Biden’s job performance while 52 percent disapprove.
The Poll Itself
It’s important to note that some would argue that Rasmussen doesn’t act the way most pollsters do, as the company takes a solidly right-wing line, especially in its social media presence, in which it more resembles a conservative media company than a polling outfit.
The tracking poll, for instance, is sponsored by “The Man Behind the Curtain,” a book about philanthropist and longtime conservative bête noire George Soros. Its Twitter account, in the last 24 hours, features defenses of recently deposed Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe and a meme with an elephant with “East Palestine” written on it, Photoshopped into a picture of Biden meeting with Ukraine’s President Zelensky. There are also Tucker Carlson segments, conspiracies about voting machines, and a plug for a book about election conspiracies by Trump attorney and former One American News anchor Christina Bobb.
In 2020, the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey looked at how Rasmussen, which is based in Asbury Park, became Trump’s “favorite” pollster.
“What strikes me most about Rasmussen over the last few years is they are the pollster Trump has repeatedly held up,” Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, told the newspaper at the time. “The reason for that is that their approval ratings for him are much higher than other pollsters. He also will hold them up while attacking Fox News.”
The Asbury Park Press did note that Rasmussen has a decent polling record compared to some other pollsters.
“And if you think Rasmussen Reports is a pro-GOP, pro-Trump polling center that polls only Republicans, the company often boast one undisputable fact: Among the plethora of national pollsters, Rasmussen came the closest at 1.7% to predicting Clinton’s 2% popular vote winning margin in 2016 (Clinton lost the Electoral College, which determines the victor).”
The company was founded by Scott Rasmussen, also a co-founder of ESPN, although he departed the firm in 2013.
As for polling of the 2024 Republican race, Trump leads the RealClearPolitics average of polls in which several candidates and potential candidates are included. Trump has 45.6 percent support, followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis with 30.2 percent, former Vice President Mike Pence with 6.4 percent, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley with 4.6 percent, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with 2.7 percent.
It is, of course, still very early, with the voting still nearly a year away, and of those candidates, only Trump and Haley are officially in the 2024 presidential race.
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Expertise and Experience: Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
