It’s been exactly one year since Donald Trump ran for president again, becoming the second US commander in chief to return to the White House after losing re-election four years ago.
Now, at the end of Trump’s first year in office, a new Yahoo/YouGov poll finds that more Americans than ever think he’s a “worse president than they thought” — and that he’s “changing America for the worse.”
The survey of 1,709 American adults was conducted from Jan. 8 to 12, after Trump ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, threatened to seize Greenland from Denmark and worried about using the Sedition Act against anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis — and before he and his team posted a “year-long social media series” on GA.
“A year ago, everything changed,” wrote the official White House account on X. “The return of power. The return of America First. The era of victory is here – and it’s just beginning.”
But a growing number of Americans seem to disagree. For example, 49% now say Trump is changing America for the worse — just 34% who say he is changing America for the better. (Only 7% say he “doesn’t really change anything.”)
Last March, Trump’s “for worse” number was 6 percentage points lower (43%) and his “for better” number was 6 points higher (40%). The gap between the two scores was 3 points; Now it’s 15.
Why? Because there is a lot of distance from Trump among independent candidates.
Before Trump took office, more independents said they expected Trump to change America for the better (41%) than they expected Trump to change for the worse (34%).
Then in March, two months into Trump’s second term, 46% of independents said the president is changing America for the worse. 36% said he is changing America for the better.
Today, those numbers are 57% (bad) and 22% (good). In other words, among independent candidates, Trump’s “changing America for the worse” rating has increased by 23 points over the course of his second term, while his “changing America for the better” rating has decreased by 19 points.
For many Americans, Trump’s performance is falling short of expectations. After his first year back in office, only 28% said he was a better president than they expected. More than twice as many (49%) said he was worse. (Another 20% say he is “the same” as they expected.)
That gap between the worst and the best — now 21 percentage points — has doubled since last March. At the time, 41% of Americans said Trump had performed worse than expected. 30% said better.
Among Republicans, Trump’s numbers haven’t changed: They went from 63% “better than expected” to 9% “worse than expected” in March, and they remain the same today. But among Democrats, Trump’s “worse than expected” number climbed 10 points (to 86%) as his “about the same” number fell 8 points (to 10%).
Meanwhile, a clear majority of independents (57%) say Trump is worse than expected. Only 16% say he is good. Those numbers were much closer — 44% to 26%, respectively — in March.
Trump’s overall job-approval rating (from 40% approval to 56% disapproval) hasn’t budged in the past few months; His ratings on personal issues have also remained stable. But looking back over the longer term — the first year of Trump’s second term — a clear pattern emerges. Simply put, more and more Americans think the president has the wrong priorities.
In March, Yahoo and YouGov asked respondents whether Trump had spent the past two months focusing on “America’s most important issues” or “not very important issues.” At that time, they were evenly split: 43% said the former and 45% said the latter.
But that is no longer the case. Today, a majority of Americans (51%) say Trump has spent his second term focusing on relatively unimportant issues; Only 38% said he focused on what was most important.
The cost of living remains the biggest drag on Trump’s presidency. Fully 70% of Americans now say he’s “not paying enough attention to it”; Less than a quarter say they focus on it “just the right amount” (21%) or “too much (2%).
By contrast, a majority of Americans (52%) say Trump has focused too much on “arresting and deporting immigrants.”
As Trump’s poll numbers plummet, he has blamed his predecessor, Joe Biden. Yet only 22% of Americans agree that Biden is “most responsible” for “the current state of the country.” A majority (53%) say Trump is the most responsible. The rest (25%) say “both equally.”
Pessimism about the future of the country is also increasing. In the summer of 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, only 25% of American adults said America’s “best days” were “behind us”; Almost twice as many (46%) said they were “yet to come.”
Trump was president at the time, yet Democrats (51%) were as likely as Republicans (53%) to say America’s best days are ahead. Less than a quarter of each said the opposite.
Now, however, more Democrats say America’s best days are behind them (42%) than they are yet to come (29%). Those numbers are almost identical among independent candidates.
Only Republicans are confident — 63% to 17% — that the country’s future will be brighter than its past.
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The Yahoo survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,709 US adults interviewed online from January 8 to 12, 2026. The sample was weighted by gender, age, race, education, 2024 electoral vote and presidential vote, party identification, and current voter registration status. Demographic weight goals come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Party identification is weighted around the estimated distribution at the time of the election (31% Democratic, 32% Republican). Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all American adults. The margin of error is approximately 3.1%.
