Trump Remains Unpopular But Approval Rating Rises as More Independent Voters Support President, Poll Shows

President Donald Trump still isn't popular, but his approval rating did rise in the latest survey published by the American Research Group on Wednesday.

The firm found 39 percent of Americans approved of his performance as president while 56 percent disapproved. That's not a stellar rating, but it did represent an uptick from the month prior. In February, just 36 percent approved while 60 percent disapproved. The 39 percent approval rating overall was Trump's highest level of support in the American Research Group survey since he hit the same number in May.

The upward shift was largely due to some independent voters changing their feelings about the president. Thirty-seven percent approved of his job performance in March compared with just 31 percent in February. There was also, somewhat obviously, a stark divide among party lines when it came to evaluating Trump's performance. Eighty-seven percent of Republicans approved compared with just 3 percent of Democrats.

The American Research Group interviewed 1,100 adults from March 17 through March 20 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Another recent poll also showed a slight uptick in Trump's popularity. A Quinnipiac University survey released on Wednesday pegged his approval rating at 40 percent. Earlier in the month, Quinnipiac University found Trump had a 38 percent approval rating, meaning his popularity ticked up a modest 2 percentage points in the past couple of weeks.

The popularity tracker from data-focused website FiveThirtyEight, meanwhile, tracks Trump's average approval rating daily by aggregating public polls and accounting for each survey's quality, recency, sample size and partisan lean. Wednesday it had Trump's average approval at 40.8 percent and his average disapproval at 53.2 percent. That's far from Trump's worst average approval rating, but was still worse than any other president in the history of modern polling at Day 426 of his presidency, according to FiveThirtyEight's tracker.