Rankings of the Presidents

I was over at wikipedia looking at the Historical Rankings of the Presidents.  I love these kinds of things.  And I deciced to play around a bit with the lists, and do one of my super-shallow, completely non-academic meta studies with it.  So I took each list, from the 1948 Schlesinger poll to the 2009 CSPAN poll and assigned each ranking a value, namely: (the rank)/(number of names on the list).  That way the top rank would be a aound 0.05 or less, the worst rank will be 1.0 and and average rank will be around 0.5.  I did this for each list, and then averaged the values for each president, then ranked them accordingly.  Here's how they shook out:

President; Political party, Rating 
Lincoln, Abraham; Republican, 0.03
Roosevelt, Frankin D; Democratic, 0.05
Washington, George; Federalist, 0.07
Jefferson, Thomas; Democratic, 0.12
Roosevelt, Theodore; Republican, 0.12
Wilson, Woodrow; Democratic, 0.17
Truman, Harry S; Democratic, 0.18
Jackson, Andrew; Democratic, 0.23
Eisenhower, Dwight D; Republican, 0.27
Polk, James K; Democratic, 0.29
Kennedy, John F; Democratic, 0.3
Adams, John; Federalist, 0.32
Johnson, Lyndon B; Democratic, 0.33
Madison, James; Democratic, 0.34
Reagan, Ronald W; Republican, 0.36
Monroe, James; Democratic, 0.37
Cleveland, S Grover; Democratic, 0.39
McKinley, William; Republican, 0.43
Adams, John Q; National-Republican, 0.45
Clinton, William J; Democratic, 0.48
Taft, William H; Republican, 0.52
Bush, George H W; Republican, 0.53
Van Buren, Martin; Democratic, 0.57
Hayes, Rutherford B; Republican, 0.58
Bush, George W; Republican, 0.62
Ford, Gerald R; Republican, 0.64
Carter, James E; Democratic, 0.65
Arthur, Chester A; Republican, 0.67
Hoover, Herbert; Republican, 0.69
Harrison, Benjamin; Republican, 0.71
Garfield, James A; Republican, 0.72
Nixon, Richard M; Republican, 0.73
Coolidge, J Calvin; Republican, 0.73
Taylor, Zachary; Whig, 0.77
Tyler, John; Whig, 0.83
Harrison, William Henry; Whig, 0.84
Fillmore, Millard; Whig, 0.85
Grant, Ulysses S; Republican, 0.85
Johnson, Andrew; Democratic, 0.9
Pierce, Franklin; Democratic, 0.91
Buchanan, James; Democratic, 0.96
Harding, Warren G; Republican, 0.97

Now... a couple of things strike me about this list...

First of all: Democrats generally rank higher than Republicans.  Taking both the Jeffersonian, Jacksonian and Modern Democrats together, their average score is 0.43.  Taking the Federalists, National-Republicans, Whigs and Modern Republicans together, their average score is 0.58.  Not to mention, there are six democraqts in the top 10 and 7 Republicans (and Whigs) in the bottom 10.

Second of all, and this is the real kicker: All of the BEST Republicans were progressives (Lincoln, Roosevelt, Eisenhower) and and all of the WORST Democrats (Pierce, Buchanan, Andrew Johnson) were Conservatives.  That, to me, says far more that just how the parties rank out.

I will say this too... this list ended up pretty close to the way I'd rank them.  Sure, George W. Bush would be a lot lower, while Nixon and George H. might be a little higher, but all in all, I wouldn't say there were any rankings that really suprsised me, or errors that I found particularly egregious.