It has been exactly one year since Donald Trump was re-inaugurated as President, becoming only the second American commander-in-chief to return to the White House after losing re-election four years earlier.
Now, at the end of Trump’s first year back in office, a new Yahoo/YouGov poll finds that more Americans than ever think he’s been a “worse president than they expected” — and that he’s “changing America for the worse” too.
The poll of 1,709 American adults was conducted from January 8 to 12, just after Trump ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, threatened to take Greenland by force from Denmark and considered using the Insurrection Act against anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis — and just before he and his team celebrated “One Year of MAGA” on social media with a series of posts.
“One year ago, everything changed,” wrote the official White House account on X. “The return of health. The return of America First. The era of winning is here – and it has just begun.”
But a growing number of Americans seem to disagree. For example, 49% now say Trump is changing America for the worse — compared to just 34% who say he is changing America for the better. (Only 7% say it’s “really not changing anything.”)
Last March, Trump’s “worst” number was 6 percentage points lower (43%) and his “worst” number was 6 points higher (40%). The gap between the two numbers was 3 points; now he is 15.
Why? Because among independents, there was a significant shift away from Trump.
Before Trump took office, more independents said they expected Trump to change America for the better (41%) than said they expected him to change America for the worse (34%).
Then in March, two months into Trump’s second term, 46% of independents said that the president was changing America for the worse; 36% said he was changing America for the better.
Today, those numbers are 57% (worse) and 22% (better). In other words, Trump’s “changing America for the worse” rating among independents increased by 23 points during his second term, while his “changing America for the worse” rating decreased by 19.
For many Americans, Trump’s performance is increasingly falling short of expectations. After his first year back in office, only 28% say he was a better president than they expected. More than twice as many (49%) say it was worse. (Another 20% say it was “about the same” as they expected.)
That gap between the worst and the best — now 21 percentage points — has doubled since last March. On that day, 41% of Americans said that Trump performed worse than they expected; 30% said better.
Among Republicans, Trump’s numbers have not changed at all: they were 63% “better than expected” to 9% “worse than expected” in March, and today they are exactly the same. But among Democrats, Trump’s “worse than expected” number rose 10 points (to 86%) as his “about the same” number dropped 8 points (to 10%).
Meanwhile, a clear majority of independents (57%) now say that Trump was worse than they expected; Only 16% say it was better. Those numbers were much closer – 44% to 26%, respectively – in March.
Trump’s overall job approval rating (40% approve to 56% disapprove) has not budged over the past few months; his ratings on individual issues have held steady, too. But looking back over a longer time frame — 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 focused on “America’s most important issues” or “not very important issues.” At the time, they were evenly split: 43% said the former and 45% said the latter.
But that is no longer the case. Today, the majority of Americans (51%) say that Trump spent his second term focused on relatively unimportant issues; Only 38% say that he focused on the most important things.
The cost of living remains the biggest drag on the Trump presidency. A full 70% of Americans now say it’s “not focused on enough”; less than a quarter say they are focused on it “the right amount” (21%) or “too much (2%).
In contrast, most Americans (52%) say Trump has focused too much on “arresting and deporting immigrants.”
As Trump’s poll numbers have fallen, he has increasingly blamed his predecessor, President Joe Biden. But only 22% of Americans agree that Biden is “most responsible” for the “current state of the country.” A majority (53%) say Trump is mostly responsible. The rest (25%) say “both equally.”
Pessimism about the future of the country is also becoming more prevalent. In the summer of 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, only 25% of US adults said that America’s “best days” were “behind us”; almost twice as many (46%) said they were “still coming.”
Trump was president at the time, but Democrats (51%) were almost as likely as Republicans (53%) to say America’s best days were ahead. Less than a quarter of each said the opposite.
Now, however, more Democrats say America’s best days are behind them (42%) than say they are yet to come (29%). Those numbers are nearly identical among independents.
Only the Republicans remain convinced — 63% to 17% — that the future of the country will be brighter than its past.
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The Yahoo poll 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 election turnout and presidential vote, party identification and current voter registration status. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Party identification is weighted with the estimated distribution at the time of the election (31% Democrat, 32% Republican). Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all US adults. The margin of error is approximately 3.1%.