Another example of how futile these lists are... but heh, look who’s ahead of Wilson! (and one behind Carter... huh?)
I gotta say, though, this presents an odd characterization of presidents, as it’s based upon negatives: I must have done something right if 8% of Americans have an unfavorable view of TR!
But 2% unfavorables for the original GW? OTOH, only 4% unfaves on AL means that you must have done something right!
"Don't know" is a big factor here. People know Carter so there's a limit to how low he can sink. That's true of Ford as well, though not for Nixon.
We know more about Madison and the Adamses thanks to recent biographies and their achievements outside the presidency so they're higher than Monroe, who must have had a more competent administration.
More people know about Buchanan, an awful President, than about Tyler who was bad, but not that bad, so Buchanan ends up higher.
And of course, there's Kennedy.
If anybody is looking for an interesting short read, there's Bruce Kuklick's The Good Ruler: From Herbert Hoover to Richard Nixon. He attacks historians for imposing their own opinions on such ratings, concentrating on counterfactuals, and thinking themselves smarter than the people who had to live back then.
Kuklick relies on the opinions common at the time. So Hoover, Truman, Johnson, and Nixon are failures, FDR, DDE, and JFK successes.
In the end, his opinions aren't worth any more than anyone else's, but it's a clever point of view. Maybe too clever: how well does it work for earlier and later presidents?