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  • 2018-06-25 (xsd:date)
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  • Was Obama Ranked 'Worst President Since World War II' in a New Poll? (en)
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  • In late June 2018, multiple conservative web sites started to circulate a graphic purportedly showing a new poll in which former U.S. president Barack Obama had been ranked the worst president since World War II. Although this claim originated with obscure blogs such as Right-Mind.us, it reached a much wider audience when it was pushed out on social media by right-wing pundits such as Chuck Woolery and Dinesh D'Souza: The referenced poll was real, but it was not new or recent: the poll was conducted by Quinnipiac University and released on 2 July 2014, information which was rarely (if ever) noted in mid-2018 postings about it. Also unnoted was the fact that the same independent polling site conducted a poll on the same question in March 2018 (which as of June 2018 would actually be considered new and recent) and found that Donald Trump had eclipsed Barack Obama as the worst president since World War II. In addition to Chuck Woolery's tweet claiming that this was years-old poll was actually new, an article published on Blunt Force Truth — the inaccurately named blog promoting the former game show host's podcast of the same name — presented this poll as if it were evidence of how the media flattery of Obama was receding from memory, and how Trump was exposing Obama's failures: This was not just a misunderstanding, but a blatantly false statement: the referenced poll was several years old and was conducted while Barack Obama was still in office, so its results in no way reflected a more distanced, retrospective view of the former president. When Quinnipiac University polled American voters on the same question in March 2018, two months before blogs and pundits regurgitated the 2014 poll as recent, they found that voters believed Donald Trump had far surpassed Barack Obama as worst president since World War II: In 2014, only 8% of voters named Barack Obama as the best president since World War II, but that number rose to 24% (second only to Ronald Reagan's 28%) in the 2018 poll. The more recent Quinnipiac University survey found that only 7% of respondents named Donald Trump best president in 2018. (en)
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