Joe Biden’s job performance over his first three years in the White House is being viewed more favorably by presidential experts than by Americans overall, a new ranking of the United States’ 45 presidents reveals.

The rankings, released Sunday, a day before Presidents Day, placed Biden as the 14th best president in history, among the top third to serve in the Oval Office. That stands in stark contrast with his approval rating of 41% last month, the lowest at this point of any presidency since Gallup began tracking the metric under President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s.

Biden is seeking reelection this year and is likely headed for a rematch against former President Donald Trump, whom the presidential rankings placed last for the second consecutive time.

The survey, conducted online in late 2023, combined the responses of 154 experts — current or recent members of the American Political Science Association’s presidential politics division as well as scholars who recently published peer-reviewed research in related journals or academic presses. Respondents were asked to rate presidents on a scale of 0 to 100 — 0 for failure, 50 for average and 100 for great.

It was the third installment of the rankings, with the previous two being released in 2015 and 2018.

The top three presidents were Abraham Lincoln (93.87 average), Franklin D. Roosevelt (90.83) and George Washington (90.32). Roosevelt and Washington flipped spots since 2018.

Trump (10.92), the first president ever to be impeached twice, ranked lower than No. 43 Andrew Johnson (21.56), whose reconstruction policies after the Civil War were so unpopular that they paved the way for his own party impeaching him, and No. 44 James Buchanan (16.71), who presided over the country just before the Civil War.

Biden’s score was 62.66.

In a Los Angeles Times op-ed announcing the survey’s results, political science professors Justin Vaughn of Coastal Carolina University and Brandon Rottinghaus of the University of Houston noted that presidents are traditionally considered great if they led the country through moments of national transformation or major crises and expanded the institution of the presidency. Military victories, economic growth, assassinations and scandals also affect opinions on presidential performance, they noted.

While Biden signed several key pieces of legislation in his first term — economic recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic, an infrastructure overhaul, and major investments in public health and climate actions among them — his record lacks the sort of criteria that would ordinarily warrant a top-15 ranking, Vaugh and Rottinghaus wrote.

“Biden’s most important achievements may be that he rescued the presidency from Trump, resumed a more traditional style of presidential leadership and is gearing up to keep the office out of his predecessor’s hands this fall,” they wrote. 

Vaugh and Rottinghaus acknowledged that academics tend to lean left, but they added that has not changed since the previous surveys. However, there appears to be an added emphasis on a president’s political affiliation and whether he exhibited a fealty to political and institution norms.

They wrote that Trump’s presidency had led the presidential scholars to score some Democratic presidents — Barack Obama (seventh), Bill Clinton (12th) and Jimmy Carter (22nd) — higher than they did in their first rankings in 2015 while Republicans Ronald Reagan (16th) and George H.W. Bush (19th) have fallen.

But while Republican academics did not rank Trump last, they did not view him favorably, either, placing him 41st. Biden, meanwhile, was farther down their list — 30th — but he still fared better than Trump.

When it came to Biden and Trump, Democrats’ rankings were largely in line with the overall results. The current president was 13th, while Trump was last. 

Independents and members of other parties ranked Biden 19th and Trump 45th.

The Biden campaign seized on the rankings to tout the president and attack Trump.

“It takes a lot to be known as the absolute worst in your profession in the history of your country,” Biden campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz said in a statement. “But Donald Trump managed to do it, and it’s pretty clear why. Donald Trump spent his four years in office working for one thing only: himself. Meanwhile, President Biden wakes up every day fighting for the American people, helping to create more jobs in three years than any president has created in four, and investing in America at record levels.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to an email seeking comment Monday.

Republican and Democratic experts also differed on who the best president was. Members of the GOP had Washington first, while Democrats ranked Lincoln 1st.

In other questions asked, respondents voted Trump as the most polarizing president ever. Carter was considered the most underrated commander-in-chief, while John F. Kennedy was voted the most overrated.

And William Henry Harrison, who died one month into his presidency, was considered the most difficult to assess.

Here are the complete rankings:

Rank, President, Score

1. Abraham Lincoln, 93.87

2. Franklin D. Roosevelt, 90.83

3. George Washington, 90.32

4. Theodore Roosevelt, 78.58

5. Thomas Jefferson, 77.53

6. Harry S. Truman, 75.34

7. Barack Obama, 73.8

8. Dwight D. Eisenhower, 73.73

9. Lyndon B. Johnson, 72.86

10. John F. Kennedy, 68.37

11. James Madison, 67.16

12. Bill Clinton, 66.42

13. John Adams, 62.66

14. Joe Biden, 62.66 

15. Woodrow Wilson, 61.8

16. Ronald Reagan, 61.62

17. Ulysses S. Grant, 60.93

18. James Monroe, 60.15

19. George H.W. Bush, 58.54

20. John Quincy Adams, 55.41

21. Andrew Jackson, 54.7

22. Jimmy Carter, 54.26 

23. William H. Taft, 51.67

24. William McKinley, 51.23

25. James K. Polk, 49.83

26. Grover Cleveland, 48.31

27. Gerald Ford, 46.09

28. Martin Van Buren, 45.46

29. Rutherford B. Hayes, 41.15

30. James Garfield, 40.98

31. Benjamin Harrison, 40.64

32. George W. Bush, 40.43

33. Chester A. Arthur, 39.61

34. Calvin Coolidge, 39.38

35. Richard Nixon, 36.41

36. Hebert Hoover, 34.08

37. John Tyler, 32.99

38. Zachary Taylor, 32.97

39. Millard Fillmore, 30.033

40. Warren G. Harding, 27.76

41. William Henry Harrison, 26.01

42. Franklin Pierce, 24.6

43. Andrew Johnson, 21.56

44. James Buchanan, 16.71

45. Donald Trump, 10.92

Note: This article was updated to correct Martin Van Buren's name.