Has Trump Crossed the Streams?

Could Donald Trump find himself on the cusp of a truly historic achievement? He’s already the second president to serve non-consecutive terms (Grover Cleveland), the first Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years, and the first president re-elected after an impeachment (and the first to be impeached twice). 

Trump could mark another historic achievement soon — at least in terms of his own history. According to the poll tracking at FiveThirtyEight, Trump may have become more popular than unpopular for the first time in his political life. Washington Post analyst Aaron Blake first noticed it this morning:

Trump is on the verge of having a net-positive favorable rating — something he never had in his first term.

(via @FiveThirtyEight) pic.twitter.com/Sh2uq9ALCP

— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) January 9, 2025

What makes this fascinating is when it takes place. On Election Day two months ago, the gap remained unfavorable at more than eight points in the FiveThirtyEight aggregation, even as Trump won the popular vote against Kamala Harris as well as the Electoral College. His 43.6/52.2 was still an improvement over the post-presidential period shown in the aggregation chart that Aaron links, but that 8.6-point gap has rapidly dissipated since Election Night.

The acceleration can be seen in the most recent polling that FiveThirtyEight uses, too. Trump has a net-positive favorability in five of them; all three net-negative come from YouGov’s tracking poll for The Economist. Even that has turned positive, however. The most recent iteration this week shows a +2 for Trump among all adults and a +1 among registered voters. If it weren’t for a mid-December outlier from Reuters/Ipsos showing Trump at -14 favorability, the streams would have already crossed at FiveThirtyEight.

Bear in mind too that FiveThirtyEight weights polls based on its own assessments of bias and reliability. What about RealClearPolitics, which aggregates without weighting? They have a somewhat different poll set, but the streams are crossing there too. In fact, their chart covers Trump’s full electoral-politics period, and demonstrates even further how singular this trend actually is:

It’s not easy to see here, but Trump already crossed the streams at RCP. Between December 2 and December 16, his average favorability narrowly topped his average unfavorability for the first time, ever. Even in the blush of his first win, Trump never quite closed the gap. The Russia-collusion allegations probably had a lot to do with that, but the fact has been that Trump has not been a broadly well-liked political figure, ever. Until now, anyway. 

So how has Trump become more popular since his Election Night cruise to victory? The media and Democrats have hardly let up on Trump criticism, especially regarding his Cabinet picks. The lawfare efforts have continued apace in one form or another, with Alvin Bragg and Juan Merchan attempting to apply the “convicted felon” tag. Of course, all of that didn’t stop Trump from winning the election either, or becoming more personally popular either, as both aggregators show in their data. 

One has to wonder whether the public has tired of the non-stop media and Democrat propaganda, even if the media and Democrats seem tireless at generating their hysterical output. 

It could also be a byproduct of the collapse of the cover-up around Joe Biden’s presidency and cognitive decline. His job approval numbers (-18.1 now) have declined precipitously over the last four months, and right now are nearing his previous July 2022 nadir (-20.7). That may well reflect the corrupt clemency decisions and last-minute attempts to thwart Trump through regulation as Biden exits the office in a cloud of spite. Biden’s personal numbers are about as bad as they have ever been, with a net-unfavorable -13.4 in RCP and especially at FiveThirtyEight, which has Biden at -17.8, less than a point from his -18.7 when he withdrew from the presidential race. 

Right now, despite all of the Protection Racket Media headwinds, Trump will assume office as a reasonably popular figure. And it is just eating up all of the right people, too.