Dolly Parton tops celebrity favorability poll; beats Obama, Trump, Taylor Swift - and it’s not close

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Dolly Parton speaks onstage at Dolly Parton's Threads: My Songs In Symphony World Premiere at Schermerhorn Symphony Center on March 20, 2025 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images)

The year was 1974, and Dolly Parton raced to the top of the Billboard country charts with her hit song, "I Will Always Love You." Now, more than 50 years later, Americans are letting the country superstar know that they still love her.

Parton topped a survey that tracked the favorability of more than 20 famous public figures, and it wasn’t even close. 

By the numbers:

Seventy percent of people told pollsters they had a positive opinion of the music legend. That’s compared to just 5% of people who had an unfavorable opinion of her, according to the University of Massachusetts/YouGov poll. The rest of those surveyed said they never heard of her (6%) or had no opinion (19%).

Subtracting the negative responses from the positive ones left her with a whopping +65 net favorability rating. To put it in perspective, that favorability mark was 51 points higher than the next most popular person on the list: former President Barack Obama.

Dig deeper:

Obama was the only person besides Parton about whom at least half of respondents had a favorable opinion. His 50% favorability score, however, came against the 36% of people who held a negative impression of him. That left his net favorability at +14 points, good for second on the list.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ranked third with a net favorability of +13, followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (+6) and former President George W. Bush (+5), who was the only other president to end up in positive territory.

One other singer-songwriter of note, Taylor Swift, proved slightly more popular than unpopular, with a net positive of only three points. 

The other side:

While Presidents Bush and Obama both held positive ratings, the two men who came after them have proved far less popular overall. With 36% of people holding a favorable opinion versus 54% having an unfavorable view, President Donald Trump ended up with a net favorability of -18, only slightly better than former President Joe Biden, whose net favorability was -19 (32%-51%).

The poll proved hard on two of the world’s most famous founders as well. Tesla CEO Elon Musk scored a net -16 rating, with only 30% of people saying they had a favorable opinion. But, while it was less than a third of the people who responded, it was still three times better than Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Just one in ten people held a favorable opinion of the Facebook founder, while more than half viewed him in an unfavorable light.

Russian President Vladimir Putin finished a distant last with the approval of just 5% of respondents and a net favorability of -65.