French President Emmanuel Macron | Christophe Petit Tesson/AFP via Getty Images Macron emerges from popularity slump French president’s approval rating has returned to levels last seen 9 months ago.

PARIS — Emmanuel Macron has staged a comeback.

The French president's approval rating reached 40 percent in May according to a poll by Harris Interactive, returning to levels last seen before the start of a turbulent nine-month period.

Macron's problems started in July last year when he faced criticism after one of his bodyguards was filmed beating protesters on May Day and were exacerbated by the resignation of a popular environment minister, Nicolas Hulot, who complained of a lack of commitment to environmental policy in the government. The crisis reached boiling point in the fall with the anti-government Yellow Jackets movement holding weekly protests.

But Macron seems to have turned the corner after a series of spending measures and a listening tour designed to soften his image and make him seem less disconnected from average people. His prime minister, Edouard Philippe, has seen a similar recovery in approval ratings.

An official close to Philippe cautioned that polls tend to fluctuate, but attributed the rise to the government having "corrected course on some issues," by performing a U-turn on a tax on pensions and implementing measures to boost the purchasing power of the less well-off in response to the Yellow Jacket crisis.

Such policy changes seem to resonate with left-wing voters in particular. This month's numbers show a sizeable improvement in Macron and Philippe's ratings among supporters of the Socialist Party, with both gaining 19 points compared with April.

Yet when it came to expressing a preference at the ballot box in the European Parliament election last month, only 15 percent of Socialist Party supporters voted for Macron's Renaissance list, according to a poll by Ipsos/Sopra. The majority of support for Renaissance came from the center and center right.