“What happened to their so-called mandate?” This question was asked in the most rhetorical of terms by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) in response to President Trump asking Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) to stay in her House seat. It would be a good question for a president struggling with personal approval ratings and backlash to his policy platform. However, the numbers show neither of these conditions is true for the current commander-in-chief. Rather, they suggest Democratic leadership is having difficulty coming to terms with an ascendant Republican presidency.

A valuable optic is employed by the Fourth Estate when discussing Donald Trump. Hosts and journalists have been happy to display headline numbers that show POTUS with a negative approval rating but generally steer clear of what it means in context. For example, RealClear Politics gives Trump an average approval rating of 48% and a disapproval of 48.8% – putting him almost a whole point underwater. But does this mean the chief executive is on a losing streak?

CNN analyst Harry Enten delivered a heavy blow to his viewers last week when he took a bold step to explain what Trump’s numbers actually mean:

“All we talk about is how unpopular Donald Trump is … But in reality, he’s basically more popular than he was at any point in term number one and more popular than he was when he won the election back in November of 2024.

“I think it’s very important to compare [the president] to himself, to understand that he’s actually more popular now than he was when he won, or certainly where he was at this point back in his first term.”

To flesh these figures out, an aggregate of polling from all of Trump’s first term yielded an approval of negative 15 points – yet, in the 2020 election, he still managed to earn more votes than he did in 2016. By November 2024, according to the New York Post, he was roughly ten points underwater. Now, he’s fast approaching the near-mythical even split.

Much of Trump’s newfound support comes from the hardening loyalty of his base, but that’s not the whole story. Recent polling by Gallup demonstrates that among a swath of key demographics, the president is gaining almost historic approval for a modern Republican president.

Consider the following shifts from 2017 to 2025:

Then we get to the numbers that give Democratic Party hopefuls night sweats.

Is it Donald Trump’s personality that is bringing these voters to the party? Most likely not. More plausible is that his policy platforms are appealing to an ever-widening margin. Once again, the numbers seem to back this notion.

One of the most watched indicators for political winds is the Right Track/Wrong Direction measurement. This polling seeks to find whether voters think the nation is heading in the right direction. When Rep. Jeffries talks about a “mandate,” he is not simply referring to the number of seats in Congress; he is expressing an opinion on how voters feel about the administration’s efforts. After all, he recently stood (all by himself) in front of Congress and declared that the “people” are “with” his party and not the GOP.

As Enten summarized: “The bottom line is, the percentage of Americans who say we’re on the right track is through the roof.” He cites a Marist poll that shows 45% of Americans agree with the direction of the country – the highest score from the pollster since 2009. Similarly, NBC’s tracking of this metric puts the figure at 44% – the outlet’s highest result since 2004.

RCP’s poll average for Right Direction/Wrong Track supports the findings of the two mentioned surveys. Its average across all major pollsters lands at 43%. Rasmussen Reports put that figure at 45% – for context, one year ago, it was just 31%.

So, what does it all mean?

Donald Trump is, by all metrics, more popular than he has ever been. The American people are more optimistic about the direction of the country than they have been in roughly 20 years, and minority voters are slowly but surely drifting toward the America First platform. For a Democratic Party currently riven with acrimony between the traditional blue dogs and the progressive extreme, this is the worst of all possible outcomes. As Queen Gertrude might have noted, perhaps Mr. Jeffries doth protest too much.