Former and current presidents are the people most commonly named by Americans as the men they most admire.
Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes that, among those being very consistently ranked in a Gallup poll that has been running since 1946 is Jimmy Carter. The 39th president of the United States announced Saturday through his foundation that he had entered hospice care. Despite serving just one term from 1977 to 1981, Carter has remained one of the country’s most beloved presidents and has been revered for his long-standing commitments to NGO Habitat for Humanity and teaching Sunday school in his hometown of Plains, Georgia. The former Navy lieutenant and peanut farmer became a state senator and the governor of Georgia before running for the presidency as a Democrat. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Price in 2002.
The only other president found in Gallup’s top 10 more often than Carter is the Republican who challenged and beat him in his reelection campaign: Ronald Reagan. He was in the top 10 a total of 31 times until his death in 2004 (the poll only lists living persons).
In first position of the all-time most admired poll is a man who is neither a president nor a politician: Reverend Billy Graham, a Southern Baptist evangelical minister who became well-known through his sermons being broadcast on radio and TV.
While Reagan and Carter only rose to national prominence in the 1970s and 1980s, Graham was already famous internationally by the 1940s and lived to almost 100 years before dying in 2018, giving him enough time to be mentioned among the top 10 of America’s most admired men 61 times.
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In a similar poll by YouGov, Jimmy Carter was still listed as the third most admired man in the U.S. behind fellow former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump the last time a country-specific version was published in 2020.
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