Who gets to write a president's legacy? The pundits on cable news? The library boards? The donors who pay for the marble? Less than a day ago a new market opened on Morfi asking whether Americans think more kindly of the legacy of Donald Trump or Barack Obama, and the crowd has already gone at it.

First, the awkward part the market's own description skips over: it calls both men "former" presidents, but Trump is in the Oval Office right now, serving a second term that runs from 2025 to 2029. So this isn't a calm look back at history. It's a sitting president being weighed against the man he loves to attack, and the official numbers aren't kind to him. A CNN poll reported by NPR in June 2026 found well over half of Americans viewing Obama favorably and only about a third saying the same of Trump, which NPR called a low point for his presidency. By September, an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll showed Trump's favorability sliding further since January 2025, and the RealClearPolitics average on the running tally of polls on his second term had him underwater by close to twenty points as of October 2026.

Obama, on the other hand, has been coasting. In Gallup's look-back approval polls of former presidents he scored highly in both 2018 and 2023, which puts him fourth among the most popular presidents since World War II. NPR is still careful to say history hasn't handed down its final verdict on either man. And the crowd? It isn't waiting for anyone's verdict.

Where the crowd stands
  • Donald Trump50%
  • Barack Obama50%

On Morfi's opinion markets the fight is a dead tie: Donald Trump at 50% consensus with 13 holders, Barack Obama at 50% with 10 holders. That's 19 traders and $36,590 on the line, and neither side is ahead. The polls point one way and the money sits exactly in the middle. Either Trump's base has turned up to defend him, or a lot of people looking at the polling just don't believe it.

A perfectly level balance scale in a city square, people climbing on both pans while suited figures watch from a balcony.
The establishment wanted a coronation. It got a perfectly level scale.

Now my opinion, and I'll be loud about it. I think this tie is the most honest thing in American politics right now. For years the pollsters, the consultants and the prestige press have told us what the country thinks, and every time they've sounded sure of themselves and then been wrong. A split crowd is a warning to every institution that wants to settle a legacy from the top down: you don't get to frame it, carve it in stone and hand it back to us. And here's the uncomfortable bit for both camps. If one man was a drone-strike-and-bailouts centrist and the other is a showman in his second act, maybe what deserves the verdict is the system that produced both of them.

What should you watch for? The next big favorability polls, any new round of Trump attacking his predecessor, and whether early traders start breaking the tie as more people pile in. Polls tell you what people say. On Morfi people put money behind what they believe. Join the market and pick your side.

Consensus over time
0%25%50%75%100%12 Oct, 15:2512 Oct, 16:23
  • Donald Trump 50.4%
  • Barack Obama 49.6%