It’s been exactly one year since Donald Trump was re-elected as president, becoming the second U.S. 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 back in office, a new Yahoo/YouGov poll finds that a growing number of Americans think he’s been a “worse president than they expected” and that he’s also “making America worse.”
The survey of 1,709 U.S. adults was conducted between Jan. 8 and Jan. 12, as Trump ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, threatened to seize Greenland from Denmark and considered using the Insurrection Act to crack down on anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis, just before he and his team celebrated “MAGA’s one-year anniversary” with a series of social media posts.
“One year ago, everything changed,” the official White House account wrote on
But a growing number of Americans seem to disagree. For example, 49% now think Trump is making America worse, while only 34% think he is making America better. (Only 7% said he “didn’t really change anything.”)
Last March, Trump’s “getting worse” number was down 6 points (43%), while his “getting better” number was 6 points higher (40%). The points gap between the two teams was 3 points; it is now 15.
Why? Because among independents, there’s been a major shift in attitudes toward Trump.
Before Trump took office, more independents said they expected Trump to make America better (41%) than they expected him to make it worse (34%).
Then in March, two months into Trump’s second term, 46% of independents said the president was making America worse; 36% said he was making America better.
Today, those numbers are 57% (worse) and 22% (better). In other words, Trump’s “making America worse” rating among independents rose 23 points during his second term, while his “making America better” rating fell 19 points.
For many Americans, Trump is increasingly 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 off. (Another 20 percent said he performed “about as well” as they expected.)
The gap between worse and better has doubled since last March and now stands at 21 percentage points. At the time, 41% of Americans said Trump’s performance was worse than they expected; 30% said it was better.
Among Republicans, Trump’s numbers haven’t changed at all: 63% said “better than expected” and 9% said “worse than expected” in March, and they’re exactly the same today. But among Democrats, Trump’s “worse than expected” approval rating rose 10 points (to 86%), while his “about the same” approval rating fell 8 points (to 10%).
Meanwhile, a strong majority of independents (57%) now say Trump has performed worse than they expected; just 16% say he has done better. In March, the numbers were even closer – 44% and 26%, respectively.
Trump’s overall job approval rating (40% approve, 56% disapprove) has remained unchanged over the past few months; his approval ratings on individual issues have also remained stable. 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 believe the president’s priorities are wrong.
In March, Yahoo and YouGov asked respondents whether Trump had focused on “America’s most important issues” or “less important issues” over the past two months. At the time, their views varied: 43% said the former and 45% said the latter.
But that is no longer the case. Today, a majority of Americans (51%) say Trump’s second term is focused on relatively unimportant issues; only 38% say he is focused on what matters most.
The cost of living remains the biggest drag on Trump’s presidency. Now, fully 70% of Americans say he “doesn’t pay enough attention”; less than a quarter say he pays “just enough” (21%) or “too much” (2%).
By contrast, a majority of Americans (52%) say Trump is too focused on “arresting and deporting immigrants.”
As Trump’s poll numbers decline, he has increasingly blamed his predecessor, President Joe Biden. However, only 22% of Americans believe Biden bears the “most responsibility” for “the current state of the country.” A majority (53%) believe Trump is most responsible. The remainder (25%) said “both are equal.”
Pessimism about the country’s future has also become increasingly common. In the summer of 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, only 25% of U.S. adults said America’s “best days” were “over”; nearly twice as many (46%) said they were “not yet here.”
Trump was president at the time, but Democrats (51%) were nearly as likely as Republicans (53%) to say America’s best days were ahead. Less than a quarter said otherwise.
Now, however, more Democrats think America’s best days are behind us (42%) than those who think America’s best days are ahead (29%). The numbers are nearly identical among independents.
Only Republicans remain convinced (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 and used a nationally representative sample of 1,709 U.S. adults interviewed online from January 8-12, 2026. The sample is weighted by gender, age, race, education, 2024 election turnout and presidential vote, party identification, and current voter registration status. Population-weighted targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Party identification is weighted based on the estimated distribution at the time of the election (31% Democratic, 32% Republican). Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel and represent all U.S. adults. The margin of error is approximately 3.1%.
