Obama ranked 12th best president by historians in new C-SPAN poll

Just weeks after leaving the White House, President Barack Obama ranks as the 12th best U.S. president overall in a new poll of historians conducted by C-SPAN ahead of Presidents Day.

It's the first time Obama was eligible for the Presidential Historians Survey, which asked 91 historians to rank all 43 former presidents across 10 categories. Those include "Pursued Equal Justice for All," in which Obama ranked 3rd, and "Relations with Congress," in which he ranked 39th.

Abraham Lincoln retained his top spot for the third time in the poll, which debuted in 2000 and last took place in 2009. Other consistently high-ranking presidents include George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt, all of whom made the top five overall in each survey.

Also notable: George W. Bush bumped up three spots to 33rd since the poll's 2009 edition, while Bill Clinton stayed steady at 15th.

The biggest loser since the 2009 survey is Andrew Jackson, the populist president whose portrait adorns the wall of President Donald Trump's Oval Office. Jackson dropped five spots, from 13th to 18th.

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James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson and Franklin Pierce have taken the bottom three spots in each edition of the poll, C-SPAN noted, beneath even William Henry Harrison, who held office for only one month.

A team of advisers, including professors from Rice University and Howard University, guided all three of C-SPAN's surveys, approving criteria, assisting with participants and overseeing collection of the results.

See the entire poll and rankings for past editions at C-SPAN.

Follow Josh Hafner on Twitter: @joshhafner