As former President Barack Obama prepares to open his long-awaited presidential center, a new national survey has cemented his status as the most popular living U.S. commander-in-chief by a substantial gap. The latest CNN poll, fielded by research firm SSRS, finds 57% of U.S. adults hold a favorable view of Obama — a rating that dwarfs the favorability scores of the two presidents who succeeded him in the Oval Office. Only 34% of respondents view Donald Trump favorably, while current former President Joe Biden trails even further behind with a meager 30% favorable rating. Obama’s cross-group appeal sets him far apart from his successors, the data shows: his favorability among political independents is more than double that of either Biden or Trump. Unlike Biden and Trump, who struggle with polarization even within their own partisan bases, Obama retains near-universal support from members of the Democratic Party. Even across the aisle, where just one in five Republicans view Obama positively, that share of cross-party backing is still higher than what either Biden or Trump receives from opposing-party voters. The poll places other former presidents’ ratings between Obama’s leading score and the low marks held by Biden and Trump. Former President George W. Bush holds a narrow net-positive rating, with 42% of Americans viewing him favorably against 33% who hold an unfavorable opinion. Ratings for Bill Clinton are roughly evenly split between positive and negative assessments. Retrospective approval ratings for former U.S. presidents often shift over time, and frequently improve years after they leave office, a trend visible in the poll’s data. Bush, who left the White House in 2009 with some of the lowest approval ratings in modern history, has seen his public image improve dramatically over the past two decades. For Trump, polling history shows his favorability climbed to 46% shortly before his planned 2025 second inauguration, up from 33% at the end of his first term — only to begin falling again immediately after he took office. Obama, who saw divided public opinion through most of his second term in office, has retained broad, consistent popularity in the years since he left the White House in 2017. In contrast, Biden entered office in 2021 with a 59% favorability rating that fell to 33% by the end of his term. Today, his 30% favorability is the lowest it has been at any point during his presidency. Though his unfavorable share has ticked down from its peak, a growing number of Americans now hold no opinion of him at all. Clinton has also undergone a negative reassessment over the past 10 years, with his favorability declining steadily. Beyond partisan approval, the survey also highlights a clear generational shift in how younger Americans engage with presidential history. As the U.S. electorate has increasingly come of age politically during the post-Obama era of polarized national politics, a growing share of young adults have little to no memory of presidents who held office before Obama. More than four in 10 adults under the age of 30 report holding no opinion at all of either Bush or Clinton, a shift reflected in updated polling methodology that now explicitly offers respondents the option to note they know of a figure but have not formed an opinion of them. When asked an open-ended question about which president in U.S. history they admire most, Americans heavily favored modern leaders. Thirty percent of respondents named Obama as the president they admire most, followed by 19% who named Trump, 9% who chose Abraham Lincoln, 9% who picked Ronald Reagan, 6% who named John F. Kennedy, and 5% who selected George Washington. Other living presidents were named far less frequently: 2% chose Clinton, 1% named Biden, and 1% named George W. Bush, with an additional 1% selecting “Bush” without specifying which member of the family. Nearly 10% of respondents said they did not admire any president or declined to offer an opinion. Partisan alignment heavily shapes results for the most-admired question: 64% of Democrats name Obama as the president they admire most, with 6% picking Kennedy, 5% selecting Lincoln, and 5% choosing Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Among Republican respondents, Trump holds the most-admired title with a 53% majority, followed by Reagan at 18%, Lincoln at 8%, and both Kennedy and Washington at 5% each.