Eleanor and Franklin with their two eldest children (Wiki Commons)
Eleanor and Franklin with their two eldest children (Wiki Commons)Wiki commons

Eleanor Roosevelt is the favorite among all the First Ladies in American history, according to a new poll.

The poll, conducted by Siena College, claims the current first lady Michelle Obama is ranked only 5th among all the First Ladies of the US. Roosevelt has always topped the list every time the Siena/C-SPAN First Ladies poll was conducted in the past 32 years. However, it is really not clear why Obama was not rated higher in the list.

Abigail Adams retained her second place and Jacqueline Kennedy came third. Dolley Madison jumped to the fourth spot, while Obama took fifth in her first appearance in the poll, as Hillary Clinton fell to the sixth. During the last poll in 2008, Clinton was in fourth position, while in 1993 during her time in the White House, she was second.

However, the political scientists and scholars' poll did put Clinton at the top, when asked which First Lady they could see serving as president with 69 percent, over Roosevelt's 39 percent and Obama's 13 percent, Politico reported.

But, the poll, which was conducted from 10 October to 25 November 2013, gave Obama the top spot, in terms of who managed family life in office, at 43 percent, ahead of Kennedy at 22 percent. Meanwhile, President Theodore Roosevelt's second wife Edith Roosevelt got 17 percent votes on this aspect.

Among First Ladies who could have done more in office, Laura Bush ranked highest with 23 percent of votes, ahead of Pat Nixon, Mamie Eisenhower and Bess Truman at 15 percent each. Laura's mother-in-law Barbara Bush got 13 percent in this category.

One good reason why Obama could not grab a higher spot was because the survey was done on 242 historians and political scientists. It is easy to guess that there could not have been a good co-relation between Obama being considered the best First Lady, and 'historians and political scientists' deciding on that.

Had the polls been conducted on the general public, the results could have perhaps been different.