Tracking Trump: How is Life Under 47?

Preference polls come and go. Presidential approval rises and falls as Donald Trump imposes new tariffs, then pulls back, then raises the stakes again. The stock market crashes, then recovers. The prospects for peace between Russia and Ukraine look reasonably promising one day, unlikely or impossible the next. A hostage deal between Israel and Hamas seems close, but then it isn’t. Inflation appears to pose a present danger, until it doesn’t.

The point is that it’s nearly impossible to gauge the ongoing popularity of any politician, particularly the uber-ambitious Donald Trump, when there are so many weighty balls in the air, almost all of which have yet to land. So, beyond approval numbers for the president that tend to combine personal popularity with current job performance, how are we to judge the way people actually feel about the trajectory of their lives today? What is the best way to reach what we might call a holistic conclusion about the collective level of satisfaction among the American public?

That is where right track/wrong track surveys come in. While not perfect, they  do reveal relative levels of happiness apart from the vicissitudes of politics. They measure optimism and pessimism on a broad scale. And they tend to be predictive when it comes to elections.

How many times have you heard someone say they don’t like Trump personally but support his policies? Millions of voters likely pulled the lever for Trump even though they are not fans of his personality but support his agenda. Millions more likely voted reluctantly for Kamala Harris because they viewed her with skepticism but just could not stomach four more years of the 45th-turned-47th president. But people can still wind up happy with their lives even though their chosen candidate loses, or unhappy even after their pick wins. Plus, untold millions of Americans are detached or disinterested in politics and thus are likely to provide honest assessments of their feelings about the direction of the country.

So, six months after the 2024 election seems an appropriate time to take stock using this time-tested measurement of citizen sentiment.

Wrong Track Always Prevails

It is important to note that, given the divisive nature of politics, it would be rare for a majority of the population to believe – or admit – the country is moving in the right direction. As a result, right track numbers have been exceeded by wrong track percentages for the entirety of the 21st century. The average right track number, according to RealClear Politics, currently sits at 44%, and the wrong track is seven points higher at 51%. But it is crucial to put these numbers in context.

In the last ten polls before the 2024 election, satisfaction with the direction of the country ranged from a low of 17% to a high of 34%, with an average of just 27% of respondents who believed the country was on the right track. Since the election, the right track number has increased by 63% to its current level. And while the average spread between right and wrong tracks in the run-up to the election was an alarming -37, it is now at -7, a dramatic spike no matter how you cut it.

To put these results in full context, this is the highest average right track result and smallest difference between right and wrong tracks in 16 years, since shortly after Barack Obama became president in 2009. In July of 2022, midway through the presidency of Joe Biden, a whopping 58% more respondents felt the country was headed on the wrong track than the right track (17% right to 75% wrong). When Trump took office on January 20, wrong track outweighed right track by 34%. Again, that difference is now down to 7%.

Trump on Track

These metrics clearly demonstrate, at a minimum, that President Trump has the country headed in what the population in general believes is a positive direction. It also reveals that neither Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris ever had a realistic chance of prevailing in 2024. And, most crucially, it means that relatively few voters regret supporting Trump’s return to the White House.

You can view this through a number of different lenses. The border has been secured. DOGE has terminated reckless taxpayer-funded progressive projects. Inflation sits at 2.1%, compared to 9.1% at one point under Biden. Consumer confidence is at a four-year high. Unemployment remains low at 4.2%. Private sector job growth has been impressive. And the Gross Domestic product (GDP) is expected to grow at 3.8% in the second quarter, almost twice the rate for most of the Biden presidency, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

But more than any individual policy or accomplishment, the fact that so many more Americans believe the country is headed in the right direction than they did under Joe Biden represents a broadly positive judgment of Trump’s America circa 2025. This, despite half the country being virulently opposed to him, big media going negative on him 90% of the time, and substantial uncertainty surrounding his tariff strategy. It reveals that the country as a whole believes Donald Trump is the right man in the right place for such a time as this.