2026 Substack Community Presidential Rankings
Readers of Strong Ideas Held Lightly ranked every U.S. president on an S/A/B/C/F tier scale. Each row shows the percentage of voters who assigned that president to each tier (rows sum to ~100 with rounding) and the total ballots cast. Grover Cleveland and Donald Trump appear once per term.
| President | S % | A % | B % | C % | F % | Votes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| George Washington | 79 | 14 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 166 | |
| John Adams | 13 | 30 | 33 | 25 | 0 | 61 | |
| Thomas Jefferson | 40 | 43 | 10 | 3 | 4 | 77 | |
| James Madison | 13 | 43 | 24 | 11 | 9 | 46 | |
| James Monroe | 17 | 40 | 32 | 6 | 6 | 53 | |
| John Quincy Adams | 13 | 20 | 43 | 22 | 3 | 79 | |
| Andrew Jackson | 25 | 20 | 15 | 21 | 19 | 106 | |
| Martin Van Buren | 5 | 5 | 33 | 37 | 20 | 60 | |
| William Henry Harrison | 22 | 3 | 13 | 35 | 26 | 91 | |
| John Tyler | 10 | 4 | 28 | 32 | 26 | 50 | |
| James K. Polk | 45 | 26 | 12 | 6 | 10 | 108 | |
| Zachary Taylor | 13 | 8 | 30 | 30 | 18 | 60 | |
| Millard Fillmore | 16 | 2 | 16 | 45 | 20 | 49 | |
| Franklin Pierce | 2 | 0 | 16 | 42 | 40 | 43 | |
| James Buchanan | 8 | 4 | 8 | 14 | 65 | 97 | |
| Abraham Lincoln | 64 | 16 | 8 | 4 | 9 | 159 | |
| Andrew Johnson | 3 | 3 | 11 | 24 | 58 | 88 | |
| Ulysses S. Grant | 23 | 31 | 31 | 14 | 2 | 117 | |
| Rutherford B. Hayes | 6 | 11 | 40 | 28 | 15 | 53 | |
| James A. Garfield | 11 | 20 | 36 | 24 | 9 | 45 | |
| Chester A. Arthur | 4 | 18 | 46 | 30 | 2 | 50 | |
| Grover Cleveland (First Term) | 16 | 20 | 37 | 24 | 2 | 49 | |
| Benjamin Harrison | 3 | 11 | 35 | 41 | 11 | 37 | |
| Grover Cleveland (Second Term) | 11 | 24 | 39 | 18 | 8 | 38 | |
| William McKinley | 17 | 45 | 24 | 7 | 7 | 58 | |
| Theodore Roosevelt | 56 | 32 | 8 | 3 | 1 | 90 | |
| William Howard Taft | 10 | 24 | 34 | 27 | 5 | 41 | |
| Woodrow Wilson | 7 | 21 | 21 | 21 | 30 | 104 | |
| Warren G. Harding | 3 | 8 | 30 | 25 | 33 | 60 | |
| Calvin Coolidge | 18 | 26 | 34 | 18 | 5 | 62 | |
| Herbert Hoover | 6 | 13 | 31 | 31 | 18 | 77 | |
| Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) | 36 | 16 | 13 | 12 | 23 | 213 | |
| Harry S. Truman | 27 | 27 | 23 | 17 | 6 | 64 | |
| Dwight D. Eisenhower | 37 | 44 | 15 | 1 | 3 | 68 | |
| John F. Kennedy (JFK) | 15 | 26 | 34 | 21 | 4 | 97 | |
| Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) | 10 | 18 | 20 | 27 | 25 | 119 | |
| Richard Nixon | 14 | 19 | 24 | 19 | 23 | 113 | |
| Gerald Ford | 7 | 11 | 39 | 33 | 11 | 76 | |
| Jimmy Carter | 10 | 13 | 17 | 32 | 29 | 101 | |
| Ronald Reagan | 11 | 35 | 20 | 24 | 10 | 93 | |
| George H. W. Bush | 8 | 36 | 31 | 21 | 4 | 112 | |
| Bill Clinton | 21 | 34 | 27 | 14 | 3 | 145 | |
| George W. Bush | 4 | 5 | 15 | 40 | 36 | 120 | |
| Barack Obama | 6 | 23 | 34 | 25 | 13 | 145 | |
| Donald Trump (First Term) | 3 | 3 | 26 | 29 | 39 | 133 | |
| Joe Biden | 4 | 5 | 16 | 38 | 37 | 154 | |
| "Donald Trump (Second Term | so far)" | 4 | 1 | 8 | 20 | 66 | 138 |
Source: community poll conducted on Substack, 2026. Minor spelling normalization was applied to president names; all values are verbatim from the poll results.