Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton among most admired of the year

He’s 97, and has kept a much lower public profile since his last crusade 10 years ago. But in 2015, Billy Graham was again among the 10 men most admired by Americans, the Gallup polling organization reported Monday.

The Charlotte, N.C.-born evangelist has now made the Gallup Poll’s Most Admired Men list 59 times. That’s a record and way ahead of anybody else. Graham’s first appearance on the list came in 1955.

President Barack Obama was the most admired man in 2015, for the seventh consecutive year.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was the most admired woman for the 14th year in a row. Overall, Clinton, who was first lady for most of the 1990s, has topped the Most Admired list 20 times — more than any other woman or man in Gallup’s history of asking the question.

Though Clinton and Obama were both No. 1 again by wide margins, both saw a slight decline in their overall percentages as the United States enters a presidential election year. Clinton is running for the Democratic presidential nomination.

GOP presidential front-runner and business tycoon Donald Trump tied with Pope Francis for runner-up on the Most Admired Men list for 2015.

Besides Clinton and Trump, three other 2016 presidential contenders appeared on the latest Most Admired lists: Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Republicans Carly Fiorina and Dr. Ben Carson.

Finishing second on the Most Admired Women list was Nobel Peace laureate Malala Yousafzai, a teen-ager who was shot by the Taliban after promoting girls’ rights to an education in her native Pakistan and in neighboring Afghanistan.

This year, Graham extended his record for Top 10 finishes, as did Queen Elizabeth II of England, who has made the list of Most Admired Women 47 times.

Graham’s closest competitor for number of times on the Most Admired Men list is former President Ronald Reagan, who made it 31 times.

A pastor to presidents, Graham held crusades all over the world during a career that spanned about 60 years. The last crusade, his 417th, was in New York in 2005.

Graham has never finished first in the Most Admired list — U.S. presidents historically get that spot — but he was runner-up from 1969 through 1974 and again in 1997 and 1999.

Here are the two lists for 2015:

Most admired women

Hillary Clinton, mentioned by 13 percent

Malala Yousafzai, 5 percent

Oprah Winfrey, 4 percent

Michelle Obama, 4 percent

Carly Fiorina, 2 percent

Queen Elizabeth II, 2 percent

Angela Merkel, 2 percent

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, 1 percent

Aung San Suu Kyi, 1 percent

Condoleezza Rice, 1 percent