Clinton kept the largest share of tracked promises at 66%; first-term Trump the smallest at 24.5%
Asked (summary):
Compare and contrast the promises made versus delivered for presidents Trump, Obama, Biden, Clinton and Bush.
No source records literally every promise a candidate utters, so this report compares the broadest completed campaign-promise scorecards available: five completed assessments — Clinton (160 promises), Bush (95), Obama (533), Biden (99) and Trump's first term (102) — from five independent sources, plus a clearly separated interim snapshot of Trump's ongoing second term (93 promises). Percentages are shares of each tracker's own promise universe; the universes differ in size and rules, so rankings describe the scorecards, not presidential effectiveness.
Completed scorecards, ordered by share of promises kept
Kept
Partial / compromise
Broken
Unresolved / pending
Obama's 533-promise tracker is by far the largest universe, and his kept-plus-compromise share (75.8%) is the strongest among the directly comparable modern trackers.
nation.com.pkTrump's first term shows the highest broken share of any completed scorecard: 54 of 102 promises (52.9%) rated broken.
api.politifact.comBiden's 99 tracked pledges split almost evenly three ways: 33 kept, 32 compromise, 34 broken.
api.politifact.comClinton's 66% comes from Knight-Ridder's 160-commitment list; the same first-term assessment counted 50 failed and 4 pending.
dailypress.com
Sensitivity: the Bush number moves with the method. Open Record's 95-promise scorecard rates Bush at 63% kept, but Knight Ridder's separate analysis of his 2000 campaign promises put fulfillment at about 46% at the end of the first term (
washingtonmonthly.com,
freerepublic.com). Clinton alternatives range as widely — a book-length review scored 136 of 157 kept (87%,
issues2000.org) while a Heritage Foundation 100-day scorecard counted only 5 of 76 actions taken (
heritage.org). Promise selection and rating rules can move the headline substantially, which is why "all promises" is not measurable.
Interim snapshot — not ranked
Trump's ongoing second term: a separate 93-promise tracker (different universe and coding from the completed scorecards) counts 19 kept (20.4%), 18 partial (19.4%), 46 broken (49.5%), 7 in progress and 3 not yet rated as of the research date. Context only, not a final verdict.
jimvincentus.substack.com
Scorecards and scope
| President | Status | Scope | Tracked | Kept | Partial | Broken | Other | Source |
|---|
Method: six promise-scorecard rows across five independent source hosts (no URL backs more than one row), researched 2026-09-30. Counts are promises; percentages are shares of each tracker's own promise universe, so universes are not directly comparable (Clinton: Knight-Ridder's 160 commitments from 1992; Obama: 533 across campaigns and eight years; Biden: 99 selected 2020 pledges; Trump first term: 102 selected 2016 pledges; Bush: Open Record's 95). "Other" combines unresolved, pending and in-progress ratings. The ongoing Trump second-term row is an interim snapshot and excluded from the ranking. Alternative Bush and Clinton assessments are shown as sensitivity notes only.