A new RMS Research poll puts President Trump at 46% approval with 52% disapproving — a net rating of -6. That's the highest net approval Trump has posted since late April, clawing back from a -17 trough in May that had every newsroom in America measuring drapes for the midterms.
Two months later, the trajectory has reversed. And the silence from those same newsrooms is instructive.
The RMS numbers aren't an isolated blip. A J.L. Partners survey landed at the same -6 net, while a Talker Research/Scripps News poll came in at -1 — statistically within spitting distance of break-even. The I&I/TIPP tracking poll, which runs monthly, showed Trump's personal favorability jumping from 37% in June to 40% in July, narrowing his net unfavorable from -16 to -12. Among independent voters — the group every campaign strategist loses sleep over — favorability climbed from 25% to 29%. Republican support ticked up from 72% to 76%, per Blaze News.
That independent voter movement is the number that should have Democrats reaching for the antacids. Four points in a single month among the voters who actually decide elections isn't noise. It's momentum. And it's moving in the wrong direction for a party banking everything on midterm backlash.
White House spokesman Davis Ingle framed it in characteristically blunt terms: "No other President in history has accomplished more for the American people than President Trump, who is working tirelessly to create jobs, cool inflation, increase housing affordability, and more." He added that "the ultimate poll was November 5, 2024" — a reference to the roughly 80 million Americans who pulled the lever for Trump.
Now, the aggregate trackers still show Trump underwater. Nate Silver's model had him at -17.4 as of late July, and the Civiqs rolling average sits around -19. The usual suspects in political media have been dining out on those numbers for weeks. But aggregates are trailing indicators by design — they weight older data alongside new polls, which means the recent upward movement hasn't fully filtered through yet. The individual surveys dropping in July tell a different story than the averages built on May and June data.
Left-leaning analysts are already explaining this away as "regression to the mean" after an unusually bad stretch. Which is an interesting way to describe a president recovering support among independents while his base consolidates further. Regression to the mean suggests the improvement is meaningless. Consolidation among independents while maintaining 76% Republican support suggests the opposite.
The broader context matters here. Trump's May cratering coincided with peak coverage of the Iran situation and inflation headlines. Both have faded from the front pages — not because they're resolved, but because the news cycle moved on. What's left is a public that's had two months to recalibrate, and the recalibration is trending toward the president. The generic congressional ballot, which had Democrats up 5 points in some surveys, has been narrowing in the same window.
Historically, presidents sitting below 45% approval at the 18-month mark lose significant congressional seats in the midterms. Trump at 46% in the RMS poll is above that threshold. At 38-40% in other surveys, he's below it. Which number is closer to reality will determine whether November looks like 2018 or something Democrats didn't plan for.
The media spent May writing Trump's political obituary. The June numbers complicated the narrative. The July numbers are burying it.
That doesn't mean the president is popular. It means the floor held, the bounce started, and the people paid to notice are looking the other way.