It's always fun, for those of us who are political junkies, to analyze polling. Some pollsters are pretty good and seem to have their fingers on the pulse of the American voters. Some, well, aren't so good. To minimize the good vs. bad aspects, I tend to look at the RealClearPolitics averages. Now, some caveats are in order; even the RCP polling averages underestimated President Trump's 2024 victory, and we might remember that the pollsters got the 2016 election even more badly wrong.

But we still watch the averages and individual polls over time, as they can give a broad indication of trends. And the trends, as of this last Tuesday in May, are interesting: President Trump's approval ratings as well as the "right direction" for the country surveys are both headed up.

First, a quick look at the RCP averages on the president's job approval. The last five polls show President Trump's approval picking up, with two interesting outliers:

1. Insider Advantage (5/17-5/19): Approve 55, Disapprove 44 (+11)
2. Economist/YouGov (5/16-5/19): Approve 45, Disapprove 52 (-7)
3. Daily Kos/Civiqs (5/17-5/20): Approve 47, Disapprove 52 (-5)
4. Quantus Insights (5/18-5/20): Approve 48, Disapprove 48 (Tie)
5. Rasmussen Reports (5/20-5/26): Approve 52, Disapprove 46 (+6)

A quick look at the graph below the chart shows the gap narrowing over the last month, and that's got to be encouraging to the Trump administration. 

But the real meat of this comes in the country's "right direction, wrong direction" trend. Again, we'll look at the last five polls:

1. Quantas Insights (5/5-5/7): Right Direction 44, Wrong Direction 50 (-6)
2. Marquette (5/5-5/15) Right Direction 42, Wrong Direction 58 (-16)
3. Harvard-Harris (5/14-5/15) Right Direction 42, Wrong Direction 49 (-7)
4. Economist/YouGov (5/16-5/19) Right Direction 41, Wrong Direction 52 (-11)
5. Rasmussen Reports (5/18-5/22) Right Direction 48, Wrong Direction 47 (+1)

Again, the trend over time is showing a distinct narrowing. And, as far as the pollsters go, when it comes to picking credible pollsters, my money's always been on Rasmussen.

Now, "Right Direction - Wrong Direction" can be slippery. It doesn't necessarily indicate corresponding support for Democrats or Republicans; there are doubtless a number of people who would normally support Republicans who may indicate "wrong direction" as the incumbent isn't far enough to the right or isn't moving fast enough. That applies to the other side, as well, and there's no way to derive any really good data on how much of the "wrong direction" response falls into that category.

Even so, these are good trends for the Trump administration, despite whatever spin the legacy media may put on it.

See Also: NYT Smugly Claims Trump Approval Is Up Because of 'Lower-Information' Voters - Should We Tell Them?

And there may be a good reason for this, and it's a reason why we may be able to see this trend continue: The lightning pace at which the Trump administration has proceeded has changed the way we look at the professional political class. If any politician had honestly intended to keep their promises, the Trump administration shows that they could have done so, one way or another. But the fact that most of them don't speaks volumes; they don't care what they were elected to do, they have their own agendas. The empty promises are just politicians working their blowholes to ensure their re-election.

These numbers may be showing that people are beginning to realize that, and it's been going on for a while now. Earlier this month, my colleague Nick Arama wrote a sterling piece on how the number looked at that time, and you can already see the trend:

See Also: Dems Won't Like This: Latest Poll About Direction of Country Hits Astonishing Number

Nick wrote:

Sifting through poll numbers to assess the truth is sometimes a challenging thing, especially when so much bull is often being spread in liberal media surveys. I tend to look more at the polls that have a history of being accurate in the past, particularly in the 2024 presidential election.

One of those polls is Rasmussen. They have new numbers out that will make Democrats break out the crying towels. After all the effort Democrats have stirred up against President Donald Trump, after the tariff furor, what is the American public thinking about where we are right now? 

Rasmussen's Mark Mitchell commented on what they found in their polling: "In 20 years, the % of people who say the US is headed in the Right Direction has never been higher than today."

We have had, for some time now, a credentialist ruling class. Too many elected officials and far, far too many "administration officials" and staffers are over-credentialed Ivy League elites with little or no connection to the American mainstream. They not only don't understand your average American, they don't care to, and many of them look with actual contempt on the people in the mainstream.

All that is changing now. If Donald Trump hadn't stripped away the mask, someone, we hope, would have. But Trump was the one, he's actually doing what he was elected to do, and the polling numbers are showing it. Despite near-universal negative coverage by the legacy media, the polling numbers are showing it.

It's enough to bring one just a little hope that we may find our way out of the current mess after all.

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