Did you know that Trump is serving in his second term?
You wouldn’t, if you watch the way the news reports his poll numbers and how they compare them to the numbers for Bush, Obama, and Biden at “this point in their terms.”
As of two days ago, Trump’s approval rating in the RCP Avg (47.5%) is higher than Obama’s and Bush’s at this point in their second terms. pic.twitter.com/Y9EZfUF0Nj
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) June 4, 2025
It is true that Donald Trump is not serving two consecutive terms, but it is also true that Trump’s second term is not at all comparable to a president still well into their honeymoon in their first term. Newly elected presidents get a lot of leeway that presidents serving their second term do not.
So, how to judge the meaning of the poll numbers?
If I were inclined to be totally honest, I don’t know how to compare things that are totally dissimilar. Trump is serving a second term, but having been rehired after a timeout, can you call this a second first term, or a second term in the manner that Clinton, Bush, and Obama got?
Who knows? As usual, Trump is unique in all respects.
What this does tell us, though, is that comparisons between public opinion on Trump cannot be interpreted in the same way that we usually use poll numbers. Not only are mainstream polls always wrong about public opinion regarding Trump, but even if the numbers were trustworthy, they are impossible to use in comparisons with previous presidents.
Generally speaking, even polls like YouGov, which often lean heavily anti-Trump, show that the approval numbers are creeping upward over the past month, not downward. Despite the unrelenting attacks on Trump, the Democrats and the Pravda Media seem incapable of moving his poll numbers. People who trust the media will continue to hate Trump, and everybody else ignores them as best they can.
None of that means Trump is immune from shifting public opinion; it’s just that public opinion writ large is not driven by elite opinion anymore. People are responding to what they directly experience, not what they read or see on TV.
A perfect example of that is Trump’s approval rating on immigration. As the media and Democrats have turned up the outrage to 11, the average American shrugs and tells the pollsters they approve of Trump on this issue most of all. On no issue other than DOGE has the media and Democrats bitch, moaned, whined, and warned of impending fascism than Trump’s deportations, and this is the one issue that all polls show that Americans approve of at majority rates.
Opinions about Trump are, for most people, set in concrete and will not budge. About 10% of the population can be persuaded one way or the other on various issues, but as far as I can see, elite opinion will not sway them a bit.
Does that make Trump a first-termer or a second-termer at this point in his presidency? I don’t think it matters, because Trump is unique and seen as such by everybody. Comparing his poll numbers to Biden or Obama “at this point in their presidency” is a fool’s errand.
Trump is Trump. Everybody knows what they think, and not much can move them.
