One Year In: Americans Believe Trump is Changing America for the Worse

It has been exactly one year since Donald Trump was re-inaugurated as president, becoming just the second U.S. commander in chief to return to the White House after losing reelection 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” as well. The survey of 1,709 U.S. adults was conducted from Jan. 8 to 12, right after Trump toppled Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, threatened to forcibly take Greenland from Denmark and mused about using the Insurrection Act against anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis — and right before he and his team celebrated “One Year of MAGA” with a series of posts on social media. “One year ago, everything changed,” the official White House account wrote on X. “The return of strength. The return of America First. The era of winning is here — and it’s just getting started.” But a growing number of Americans seem to disagree. For instance, 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 he’s “not really changing anything.”) Last March, Trump’s “for the worse” number was 6 percentage points lower (43%) and his “for the better” number was 6 points higher (40%). The gap between the two numbers was 3 points; now it’s 15. Why? Because among independents, there has been 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 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 has risen by 23 points over the course of his second term, while his “changing America for the better” rating has fallen by 19. For many Americans, Trump’s performance is increasingly falling short of expectations. After his first year back in office, just 28% say he has been a better president than they expected. More than twice as many (49%) say he has been worse. (Another 20% say he has been “about the same” as they expected.) That gap between worse and better — now 21 percentage points — has doubled since last March. Back then, 41% of Americans said Trump had performed worse than they 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 they are exactly the same today. But among Democrats, Trump’s “worse than expected” number has climbed 10 points (to 86%) as his “about the same” number has dropped 8 points (to 10%). Meanwhile, a clear majority of independents (57%) now say Trump has been worse than they expected; just 16% say he’s been 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 last 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 last two months focused on “America’s most important issues” or “issues that aren’t very important.” At the time, they were evenly split: 43% said the former and 45% said the latter. But that’s no longer the case. Today, a majority of Americans (51%) say Trump has spent his second term focused on relatively unimportant issues; just 38% say he has focused on the most important things. The cost of living remains the biggest drag on Trump’s presidency. A full 70% of Americans now say he has “not focused on it enough”; less than a quarter say he’s 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 declined, he has increasingly blamed his predecessor, President Joe Biden. Yet just 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 equally.” Pessimism about the country’s future is becoming more prevalent as well. In the summer of 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, just 25% of U.S. adults said America’s “best days” were “behind us”; nearly twice as many (46%) said they were “still to come.” Trump was president at the time, yet Democrats (51%) were nearly 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 it (42%) than say they’re still to come (29%). Those numbers are nearly identical among independents. Only Republicans remain convinced — 63% to 17% — that the country’s future will be brighter than its past. __________________