President Donald Trump finished at the top of Gallup’s most admired man in America survey for 2020, ending former President Barack Obama’s 12-year run with the title.
While incumbent presidents have been named the most admired man in 60 of the 74 polls taken, Obama had come first in 2017, 2018, and tied with Trump in 2019. However, the emergence of President-elect Joe Biden split the vote among Democrats, giving the victory to Trumpwith 18% of respondents.
Obama finished second with 15%, followed by Biden with 6%, Dr. Anthony Fauci with 3%, Pope Francis with 2%, and billionaire Elon Musk, Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, billionaire Bill Gates, basketball star LeBron James, and the Dalai Lama all finishing with 1%, respectively.
Like Trump in 2017 and 2018, other sitting presidents who have not finished first in the poll include “Harry Truman (1946-1947 and 1950-1952), Lyndon Johnson (1967-1968), Richard Nixon (1973), Gerald Ford (1974-1975), Jimmy Carter (1980), George W. Bush (2008),” Gallup reported.
Forty-eight percent of Republicans named Trump in 2020, according to the polling outlet, while Democratic responses were split between Obama (32%) and Biden (13%).
Obama ends his run as Gallup’s most admired man tied with Dwight Eisenhower for the most top finishes at 12.
Former first lady Michelle Obama came in first in the analytic company’s most admired woman survey for the third straight year, with 10% of the vote compared to Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ 6%. First lady Melania Trump rounded out the top three with 4%. The rest of the top 10 included former talk show host Oprah Winfrey, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Queen Elizabeth II, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.