Former FLOTUS Michelle Obama appears to have beaten for a second straight year the remaining contenders in a poll, gaining the universally acclaimed title of the US most admired woman, with current First Lady Melania Trump trailing just behind in second spot, per Gallup’s 2019 poll.
The 55-year-old Obama earned 10 percent of the vote, closely followed by the sitting FLOTUS, 49-year-old Melania Trump.
The first ladies beat Oprah Winfrey, aged 65, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, aged 72 and teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, all with three percent in the poll.
Their closest rivals included Queen Elizabeth II (overall her 51st time), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, US Senator Elizabeth Warren, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Although Obama’s percentage is down from 15 percent in the 2018 poll, in July she claimed the title of the Most Admired Woman, per a YouGov poll, overtaking Clinton, Winfrey, Queen Elizabeth II, and award-winning actress Angelina Jolie.
It has been a busy year for Obama, as she has been touring the country after her 2018 memoir, Becoming, became the best-selling book in the US last year. After she saw her youngest daughter, Sasha Obama, off to the University of Michigan in August 2019, she stepped up her efforts to encourage young people to work.
With men, the first ladies’ husbands, the division was less conspicuous as both Barack Obama and President Donald Trump tied for first spot as 2019’s Most Admired Man, despite historically polling first than their better halves.
Michelle Obama is the sixth first lady to have climbed to the first place in the annual Gallup poll, after Eleanor Roosevelt (1948-1950 and 1952-1961), Jacqueline Kennedy (1963-1966), and a number of other presidential wives.