President Donald Trump was plagued with negative job approval ratings throughout the near entirety of his first term in office, but that hasn't been the case at all for the start of his second stint in the White House.

A new poll suggested that Trump was more popular with the American people than ever before and enjoyed a +8 positive approval rating, with 54% approval to 46% disapproval, following his first month in office, according to the Daily Mail.

The poll also found that, despite an onslaught of hysterical Democratic opposition and incessant media criticism, more than a third of Americans, about 36%, viewed Trump more positively than before he was sworn in as the president for a second time.

Trump doing exceptionally well in new poll

Those somewhat surprising poll results came from a survey conducted between Feb. 24 and 25 of 1,001 registered voters by the Daily Mail in conjunction with the pollsters at J.L. Partners.

The outfit acknowledged that the 54-46% approval rating was a result of stripping away the noncommittal responses from indecisive voters, but when respondents who replied with "don't know" to the question about President Trump's job performance thus far were included, the final tally was adjusted down to 45% approve and 39% disapprove.

The 54% approval for Trump was just a tick above the 53% he received from the same poll just a couple of weeks earlier, and interestingly enough, that slight increase overall appears to have come largely from a five-point increase among young voters aged 18-29, from 51% to 56%, and from Democrats, which increased to 22% from 20%.

It was also found that 36% of respondents had a more positive view of Trump than before, while just 16% said their view was more negative and the remainder's opinion of the president was unchanged.

Polling averages appear to sink lower

The Daily Mail's 54% approval rating for President Trump is on the high end of RealClearPolling's running average of top national approval polls for the president, which currently has him at just +1.2 points with 48.6% approval and 47.4% disapproval.

Though Trump remains in positive territory for now in the RCP average, the margin is much slimmer than it was just a few days after he first took office on Jan. 20, when the initial average placed him at +8.5 points with approval of 51.5% compared to disapproval from 43% of voters.

That decrease in Trump's average approval was driven by a handful of polls that either had his numbers effectively tied or placed him in negative territory, which the media has quite predictably pounced on to try to argue against the president's popularity.

As just one example, "Good Morning America" reported this week that Trump was getting ready to deliver a joint address to Congress "amid sagging approval ratings, which the outlet suggested was a growing negative response from the public to the president's swift and forceful rollout of his policy agenda.

In support of that assertion, GMA cited 538's aggregate of approval polls that differs somewhat from RCP's average and put Trump at just +0.1 with a 47.8% approval compared to 47.7% disapproval.

Pollster says Trump's approval is "holding firm rather than slipping"

The Daily Mail reported that J.L. Partners cofounder James Johnson told the outlet of the president's approval, "Some pollsters have found Trump’s ratings slipping," but noted, "We think this is a reflection of non-response bias rather than reality: Basically, energized Democrats who were not answering polls a month ago now doing so."

"Our polling was the most accurate in 2024, and we are confident this is the real picture: Trump’s approval rating holding firm rather than slipping," the pollster added.