Donald Trump’s honeymoon has finally arrived

2017 ≠ 2025.

Over the course of his career, Donald Trump has been many things: A businessman. A showman. A politician. A co-star in “Home Alone 2.”

But as of this month, he’s become something new: popular.

For as long as pollsters have been asking Americans their opinions about Trump, he’s been a divisive figure. In September 1999, as Trump was teasing a Reform Party presidential bid, Gallup polled his favorability rating for the first time, and found more Americans had a negative (47%) than positive (41%) opinion of him.

By the next month, that gap had widened even further; his favorability rating plunged from -6 in September to -25 in October. It bounced around some more (including a lone above-water poll in 2005) until settling fairly consistently at about 35% for most of 2016. That bumped up to around 40% during his presidency, and then around 45% during the 2024 campaign. In Gallup’s most recent reading, just after the election, Trump’s rating had moved up to 48% favorable, 48% unfavorable.

The same trend holds true if you incorporate other pollsters — but with a small twist: in the RealClearPolitics polling average, Trump now has a net-positive favorability rating for the first time since he entered politics.

Back in September, I wrote the following:

Kamala Harris may win this election; she may not. It’s a flat-out tossup and neither I nor anyone else can tell you the outcome in advance.

But, no matter what happens, she pulled off something yesterday that is genuinely impressive: turned around a 17-point polling deficit [in her favorability rating] in about two months.

By the same token, we have to stop and recognize Trump’s impressive feat: he has turned around his own deep polling deficit in around five weeks.

Of course, the idea of a presidential honeymoon is nothing new. Joe Biden’s average favorability rating went from +6 on Election Day 2020 to a peak of +14 in April 2021, shortly after taking office. Barack Obama’s Gallup reading shot from +28 on Election Day 2008 (impressive in its own right) to +60 during his transition (nearly unthinkable today).

But Trump is Trump. His favorability rating is supposed to be famously stable and, indeed, largely has been since his first presidential term began in 2017. He saw something of a honeymoon the first time; his average favorability went from -19 on Election Day 2016 to -8 when he was sworn in — a noticeable jump, but still ways away from being net-popular.

By May 2017, when he fired James Comey, Trump’s rating had returned to the negative double-digits, and it stayed mostly between -10 and -15 for the rest of his presidency. After January 6th, it shot to -20. Today, he’s at +2, a remarkable rehabilitation.

(FiveThirtyEight’s polling average, it should be noted, has Trump at -2, not quite above-water, but still reflecting a similar transformation from -8 on Election Day. RCP’s tends to a lean a bit more conservative, though YouGov’s favorability tracker, like RCP’s, currently shows Trump newly net-popular.)

That Trump is receiving the polling honeymoon in his second term that he was denied in his first reflects the differences between these two victories, and how the country has responded to them.

Trump’s second win, which was more decisive — and, importantly, came without the asterisk of losing the popular vote — has brought along more of the cultural markings of a presidential victory. The “Trump Dance” has gone viral in the sports world; late last month, the crowd at a UFC event at Ultimate Fighting Championship event roared as Trump pulled Joe Rogan in for a hug. Trump has loomed over American culture for nine years now — but much of that has been due to unflattering imitations, rebukes from celebrities, and other forms of negative attention. Now, that’s no longer the case.

With Joe Biden a diminished figure — he has yet to give a press conference since the election; now, he’s earning backlash from his own party over his use of clemency for his son and other controversial figures — Trump is also acting as much like a president as a president-elect.

Lawmakers are seeking his approval for legislation. Foreign leaders and CEOs are flocking to Mar-a-Lago. Last week, he rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange; this weekend, he seemed to preside over the annual Army-Navy football game. Later today, he is set to appear with the CEO of Japanese telecommunications giant Softbank to announce a $100 billion investment by the company in U.S. projects over the next four years. Biden, the sitting president, will be absent.

Of course, honeymoons don’t last forever, and Trump’s won’t either. For Biden, all it took was one embarrassing event — the Afghanistan withdrawal — for his favorability rating to plummet and never recover. Something similar will likely happen for Trump.

But the embrace he has received during the transition, from titans of business, politics, and sports — and, per polling, from the public — shows that his second marriage with the country won’t kick off in the same cloud of disfavor as his first. The nation’s political environment has shifted, and even Democratic politicians seem to understand it.

Democrats have gone from promising “resistance” to pledging to work with the president-elect. You wouldn’t have seen a photo like this (of Maryland’s Democratic governor, Wes Moore, smilingly greeting Trump at the Army-Navy game) in 2017:

Trump’s first victory was written off by many as a fluke. But his second win — even after two impeachments, four indictments, and a candidate swap — has stabilized his place in American politics like nothing before.

Next month, Trump will enter office armed with a new political reality — popularity — for the first time since he rode down his gilded escalator. The only question is how long it can last.

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More news to know

ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos. (Photo by ABC News)

The George Stephanopoulos Wing? ABC News is paying $15 million to Trump’s presidential library as part of a settlement after Stephanopoulos falsely said on air that Trump had been found civilly liable for rape. (He was found civilly liable for sexual abuse.)

Tick tock: Government funding is set to expire on Friday, and lawmakers have yet to finalize a stopgap spending bill.

Pete Hegseth plans to release his sexual assault accuser from their non-disclosure agreement, per Lindsey Graham.

It’s RFK Jr. Week on Capitol Hill.

Mitch McConnell is not going quietly into the night.

Trump is promising to eliminate Daylight Saving Time.

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The day ahead

FDR-era Labor Secretary Frances Perkins. (Photo by the National Archives)

• President Biden will hold an event at the Labor Department to sign a proclamation establishing the Frances Perkins National Monument in Newcastle, Maine — honoring the nation’s first female cabinet secretary — and host a Hannukah reception at the White House.

• Vice President Harris has nothing on her schedule.

• President-elect Trump will join SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son at Mar-a-Lago to announce the company’s plan to invest $100 billion in the U.S. through 2029, creating an estimated 100,000 jobs.

• The Senate will hold a procedural vote on the House-passed annual defense policy package.

• The House will vote on up to 33 pieces of legislation.

• The Supreme Court has no oral arguments scheduled.