Poll: Majority of Democrats thinks Obama was better president than Washington

A majority of Democratic voters said former President Obama was a better leader than founding father and first president of the U.S. George Washington in a new poll.

The poll, conducted by Monmouth University, found that 63 percent of Democratic survey respondents believed that Obama was a better president than Washington. Twenty-nine percent of those polled believed that Washington beat out the 44^th president. 

Among all registered voters surveyed, 58 percent say Washington was a better president compared to 33 percent for Obama. Compared to Trump, Washington received 71 percent support while the president received 15 percent.

{mosads} Forty-four percent of Republican voters polled said Washington was a better president than Trump, while 37 percent said Trump is better than Washington. 

Washington beat out both modern presidents among independent voters, with 72 percent saying he is better than Trump and 62 percent saying he is better than Obama. 

Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, admitted that there could be “a combination of factors at work when you ask a question like this.”

“Democrats may be more likely than Republicans to be influenced by recency bias, valuing what they are familiar with over historical opinion,” Murray said. “It’s a fun question to ask, but I’m not sure what it means.”

The question was “inspired” by a recent Economist/YouGov Poll that asked voters whether Trump or Abraham Lincoln was a better “Republican president,” according to the poll. That poll found that 53 percent of Republicans said Trump was a better president than Lincoln, while 47 percent chose the Civil War-era leader.

The poll found that Trump currently has a personal rating of 46 percent favorable and 52 percent unfavorable among registered voters.  

The Monmouth University Poll was conducted over the phone from Dec. 4 to Dec. 8. It polled 903 U.S. adults in total, with its results based on 838 registered voters. It has a +/- 3.4 margin of error.