In another election, Obama wins again! According to ABC News, former first lady Michelle Obama has been named the “most admired woman” in the world for the second time in as many years.
In the annual Gallup Poll, Obama earned that title with 10% of the votes and was the only woman on the list to compile a double-digit percentage. She has been named as the most admired woman the past two years after 25 years that saw Hillary Clinton finish first 22 times. Obama has had a higher percentage of the votes the past two years than during her eight years as first lady, never earning more than 8% of Americans voting for her.
Although she finished in the top spot this year with 10%, it was down from 15% last year. Current first lady Melania Trump received 5%, which lands her in second place with the queen of talk Oprah Winfrey, Hillary Clinton, and teen climate change activist Greta Thunberg—each named by 3% of U.S. adults who placed votes. Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley rounded out the rest of the top 10.
In the same poll, former President Barack Obama, for the 12th time (a record he shares with former President Dwight Eisenhower), was named most admired man, which was a tie with the current president, who appears at the top for the very first time,
Donald Trump. Obama’s 18% is in line with his 2018 (19%) and 2017 (17%) numbers, all of which are high for a former president. Eisenhower is the only other former president who received double-digit mentions at any point after leaving office.As it has been with recent bipartisan politics, the results of the poll are sharply divided along party lines: 41% of Democrats named
President Obama, while 45% of Republicans chose Trump. The former president also picked up 3% of Republicans and 12% of Independents while Trump drew 2% of Democrats and 10% of Independents.Michelle Obama’s most recent book, Becoming: A Guided Journal for Discovering Your Voice, was released on Nov. 19. It is a companion piece to her critically acclaimed memoir, Becoming.