It’s been exactly one year since Donald Trump was re-inaugurated as president, becoming only the second US 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 shows that more Americans than ever before think he’s been a “worse president than expected” — and that he’s “changing America for the worse,” too.
The poll of 1,709 US adults was conducted between January 8 and 12, just after Trump ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, threatened to take Greenland from Denmark by force and considered using the Sedition Act against anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis — and even before he and his team celebrated “One Year of MAGA” with a series of social media posts.
“One year ago, everything changed,” wrote the official White House account on X. “The return of power. The return of America first. The era of winning is here – and it’s just beginning.”
But a growing number of Americans seem to disagree. For example, 49 percent now say Trump is changing America for the worse, compared to just 34 percent who say he is changing America for the better. (Only 7% say it “doesn’t really change anything”).
Last March, Trump’s “favorable” number was 6 percentage points lower (43%), and his “favorable” number was 6 points higher (40%). The difference between the two numbers was 3 points; now he is 15.
Why? Because among independents, there has been a significant shift since 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 percent of independents said the president is changing America for the worse; 36% said they are changing America for the better.
Today, these figures are 57% (worse) and 22% (better). In other words, Trump’s “changing America for the worse” rating among independents rose 23 points over the course of his second term, while his “changing America for the better” rating fell 19.
For many Americans, Trump’s performance is falling short of expectations. After his first year back in office, only 28% say he has been 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.)
The gap between worst and best – now 21 percentage points – has doubled since last March. At the time, 41% of Americans said Trump performed worse than expected; 30% said better.
Among Republicans, Trump’s numbers haven’t changed at all: They were 63% “better than expected” to 9% “worse than expected” in March and are exactly the same today. But among Democrats, Trump’s “worse than expected” number rose 10 points (to 86%) as his “about the same” number fell 8 points (to 10%).
Meanwhile, a clear majority of independents (57%) now say Trump has been worse than they expected; only 16% say it was better. These figures were much closer – 44% and 26% respectively – in March.
Trump’s overall job approval rating (40% approve to 56% disapprove) has not increased in recent months; his ratings on individual issues also held steady. But looking back over a longer time frame — the first year of Trump’s second term — a clear pattern emerges. Quite simply, more and more Americans believe 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 “issues that are not very important.” At the 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 focused on relatively unimportant issues; only 38% say he focused on the most important things.
The cost of living remains the biggest obstacle to Trump’s presidency. 70% of Americans now say they “didn’t focus enough on it”; less than a quarter say they focused on it “the right amount” (21%) or “too much (2%).
Instead, a majority of 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. However, only 22% of Americans agree that Biden is “most responsible” for “the current state of the country.” A majority (53%) say Trump is most responsible. The rest (25%) say “both the same”.
Pessimism about the country’s future is becoming more widespread. In the summer of 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, only 25% of US adults said America’s “best days” were “behind us”; almost twice as many (46%) said they would “come again”.
Trump was president at the time, but Democrats (51%) were nearly 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 us (42%) than say they are ahead (29%). These figures are almost identical among independents.
Only Republicans remain convinced — 63 percent to 17 percent — that the country’s future 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 surveyed online between January 8-12, 2026. The sample was weighted by gender, age, race, education, turnout in the 2024 election and presidential vote, party identification and current voter registration status. Demographic weighting targets are from the 2019 American Community Survey. Party identification is weighted by 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%.