Last November, President Donald Trump won not just the Electoral College, but the popular vote as well, a feat a Republican hasn't achieved since 2004. That wasn't the only thing different about Trump's win from 2016. He's also enjoyed higher approval and favorable ratings this time, as we've been covering. Now that Trump's second term is about a week old, the mainstream media has taken a bit of a different turn, though.
"Once again, Trump starts a term with a weak approval rating," read a 538 headline shared to ABC News on Thursday morning. With the headline about "a weak approval rating," one would think that Trump was doing poorly and just as poorly as he did at the start of his first term. Perhaps he's even facing a negative rating? Not at all.
According to 538's collection of polls, Trump has a 49.8 percent approval rating, while 42.8 percent disapprove, giving him a net approval rating of +7.0. In 2017, Trump had an approval rating of 44.6 percent, while 41.4 percent disapproved, for a net approval rating of +3.2.
The start, and pretty much the entirety, of Trump's first term was marred by Democrats refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of his win over Hillary Clinton. It wasn't merely because he won the Electoral College while losing the popular vote, but because Democrats, especially and including now Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who was later censured, obsessively turned to Russia collusion hoax claims to define Trump's election.
While 538 does not mention that, they also cite positives for Trump:
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Trump faces a number of tailwinds and headwinds in his first month in office. His marquee executive order to deport immigrants who are in the country illegally and have been accused of crimes is broadly supported by the American public. And an Associated Press/NORC poll conducted earlier this month found a supermajority of adults support deporting immigrants "who have been convicted of a violent crime" — with higher support for immigrants who are here illegally (83 percent) versus those who are here legally (69 percent). There is also support for reducing the number of immigrants coming into America legally, finishing the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and declaring a national border emergency.
What about former President Joe Biden at the start of his term? He had a 53.5 percent approval rating and a 31.7 percent disapproval rating, for a net approval rating of +21.8 percent.
And yet we know how that all turned out. After the end of his first year in office, Biden's approval rating dropped farther and faster than any president, as Marc Thiessen explained at the time. Further, he finished his term at a personal low. Biden came up with a whole bunch of promises that he kept insisting on until the end, such as how he ran to unite the country, while doing the complete opposite, and politics were seen as having gotten worse.
538 acknowledges the changes for presidents, though they focus on Trump rather than Biden, and set the stage for Trump's numbers to get worse.
Finally, Trump goes up against an apparent gravitational force that pulls down on approval ratings as time goes on. Presidents tend to enjoy their best net approval ratings at the start of their terms. Then, as policies are passed that shift the effective ideology of the U.S. government away from the ideology of the average voter, and as the president inevitably marginalizes members of his own constituency by focusing his political capital on other policy domains, voters leave the president's side and his approval rating dips. This has been a consistent pattern for the last 80 years, barring events in foreign wars or attacks on the homeland.
Other than Trump's terms, that nearly 22 percent for Biden is still lowest going back to the presidents polled since the end of World War II. Behind him is President George W. Bush, who had a 44.9 percent approval rating and a 17.0 percent disapproval rating, for a net approval rating of +27.9 percent.
Although he won the popular vote in 2004, Bush lost it in 2000, and Florida's then confusing voting system forced the U.S. Supreme Court to get involved. Just as they did with Trump after the 2016 elections, Democrats were fierce election deniers, including and especially former Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, who at the time served as chair of the DNC.
The 538 piece looks to try to catch itself, perhaps in hopes of sparing itself from ire of the Trump White House:
But past patterns do not guarantee future results. It is possible that Trump will be viewed more favorably as time goes on. Maybe Americans will reward the president for his handling of the border, and he will end up jettisoning the less popular parts of his policy agenda as he did in 2017. He may also be rewarded for an economy that has largely healed from pandemic-induced inflation and labor-market tightness.
For now, what we know is that Trump starts in a relatively weak position compared to past presidents. The only president he outscores is himself, from 2017. That is not likely to reassure the White House.
That line about how Trump's numbers are "not likely to reassure the White House" is bogus. The Trump White House is riding a high it certainly seems, especially since Trump is regarded as popular. Further, unlike the particularly incompetent Biden-Harris White House, this administration actually gets work done.
It's not likely that the White House is actually worried about such a write-up from 538, especially when they know how the media is looking for Trump to fail after providing pathetic cover to President Joe Biden.
Then there's Newsweek, which on Tuesday morning rushed out to warn that "Donald Trump's Approval Rating Has Declined." That is according to Rasmussen Reports' daily polling, which showed Trump went down from 56 percent on January 23 to 52 percent on January 28.
In the "What People Are Saying" section, a Monday night post over X from Stuart Stevens of the particularly anti-Trump Lincoln Project is mentioned, bragging about data from the American Presidency Project showing that Trump's first and second terms show he's not as popular as other presidents.
Just to clear up any Trump world fantasy that Donald Trump has a mandate, his current approval rating of 47% is the second lowest of any new president in modern history.
— Stuart Stevens (@stuartpstevens) January 27, 2025
The lowest was Trump in his first term. https://t.co/QCt0wPho0a
he started with 47% it is now up to 53%. CNN just reported he has the highest approval rating going into a second term than ANY president in history. and they didn’t like reporting it.
— Financachu (@financachu) January 27, 2025
Stevens' post was hit with plenty of replies, including one who pointed to CNN's reporting telling a different story. As Matt covered earlier on Tuesday, CNN's Harry Enten had Kate Bolduan on Friday in disbelief over how well Trump is doing now in his second term.
"This is a very different Donald Trump. He's leading a very different administration, the way he's attacking things. And the American public is very much more in line with him than they were at any point during his entire first term," Enten stressed. He had been going over a Reuters/Ipsos poll, the same one we covered last week.
Bolduan still insisted on interruption Enten, who was just going over the numbers, to issue a "correction" in that "he's not a very different Donald Trump," as if she was the sole arbiter of deciding that. "This is a very different Donald Trump in--as being viewed by voters in this moment," she said instead.
Enten offered that Chief of Staff Susie Wiles is leading things, and that the White House is operating "in a much less disorganized fashion" and that it's "much more organized."
As Bolduan and Enten looked back in history to other presidents, Enten pointed to how Trump has achieved quite the feat, with a higher approval rating than during the entire first term. Bolduan cut Enten off yet again though, to claim in a particularly high pitched voice, "I have a really hard time believing this."
"This is true. I don't make stuff up. The numbers are the numbers," Enten reminded Bolduan, as all he was trying to do was go over the numbers and express his love for spreadsheets he was looking over.
Such skepticism from Bolduan doesn't exactly look good for her network, though it also perfectly captures the mainstream media at the same time.
CNN’s Kate Bolduan panics and tries interjecting after CNN’s Harry Enten tells her Trump has a higher approval rating than he has ever had.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 26, 2025
Enten: This is a very different Donald Trump.
Bolduan: Well, I would say correction. This is not a very different Donald Trump.
Enten:… pic.twitter.com/rOHvowHA3g
