Donald Trump Is A Better President Than Abraham Lincoln, 53 Percent Of Republicans Say

A majority of Republicans believe that President Donald Trump is a superior leader to President Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, according to a new poll conducted by Emerson/YouGov.

Fifty-three percent of those surveyed said that Trump was a better president compared to 47 percent of Republicans who said they believed that Lincoln, who served as president from 1861 until his assassination in 1865, was the superior leader of the U.S.

While Trump is the favored president among Republicans, the numbers are far different when all Americans – regardless of party – were surveyed. Seventy-five percent of all Americans polled in the Emerson/YouGov weekly poll said that Lincoln was a better president than Trump. Ninety-four percent of Democrats felt that Lincoln was superior to the 45th president, while 78 percent of Independent voters surveyed preferred the 16th commander in chief.

The president and his supporters have – at times – evoked Lincoln’s name to gain support, particularly among minority voters, as Lincoln was a member of the Republican Party. Lincoln joined the party in 1856 after previously serving in government as a member of the Whig party. As History.com notes, however, the Democratic Party was seen as the more conservative party until the progressive era at the turn of the 20th century when it began to adopt stances further left than the Republican Party. In an article earlier this year, the New Yorker, called the president’s attempts to compare himself to Lincoln “increasingly weird.”

According to Biography.com, President Lincoln is considered to be one of the greatest American leaders of all time. The Kentucky native was known for his role in preserving the Union during the Civil War and for issuing his Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863, which led to the emancipation of American slaves.

The same November poll also asked voters whether they supported the president’s impeachment by the House and his removal by the Senate. As a whole, 45 percent of Americans surveyed in the poll said they believed the Senate should remove the president from office. The numbers, unsurprisingly, change when broken down by political party affiliation. Eighty-three percent of Democrats said they believed the president should be removed from office, while 38 percent of Independent voters felt the same way. When asked, just 11 percent of Republican voters polled said that Trump should be removed by the Senate if the House votes to impeach him.

The Emerson/YouGov poll was conducted between November 24 and 26, and polled some 1,500 Americans. Just under 1,200 individuals surveyed out of the 1,500 were registered voters, per Emerson/YouGov. The survey, which broke down responses by several demographics, including political party, age, and gender, asked questions on a myriad of topics – from impeachment, to support for Democratic presidential candidates, to American thoughts on the nation’s relationship with various nations like China, North Korea, and Mexico.