Majority Of Americans Say Trump Policies Made Country, Their Lives Worse As His Big Speech Looms
The majority of Americans believe the country is moving in a negative direction under Donald Trump’s presidency, according to a poll released Monday.
The NPR/PBS News/Marist poll found that 55% of U.S. adults said Trump was moving the nation in a worse direction, 37% said he had made positive changes and 8% said the president’s leadership was not producing any real change. The poll’s release comes a day before Trump delivers the first official State of the Union address of his second presidency on Tuesday evening. (RELATED: Jamieson Greer says Trump still has ‘very durable tools’ for tariffs, trade deals)
The 18-point gap between the percentage of respondents saying the nation is changing for the worse and the percentage saying it is changing for the better is double what it was less than a year earlier. In the April 2025 Marist survey, 51% of respondents said the nation’s trajectory under Trump was a change for the worse, while 42% said it was a change for the better.
The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Additionally, 53% of Americans said Trump’s policies have had a mostly negative personal impact on them, an increase from 49% who said the same last April, according to the poll. The survey also shows that 30 percent of respondents said their personal effect on the administration has been mostly positive, while 17 percent say its policies have had no impact on them.
Meanwhile, 85% of Democrats, 58% of independents and 13% of Republicans said Trump’s policies have been harmful to them personally, according to the poll. Still, nearly seven in 10 Republicans, or 69 percent, say his policies have benefited them personally, the survey found.
“It is not unusual for a president to have a long to-do list for the [State of the Union address]”but President Trump’s ‘checklist’ seems exceptionally long,” Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist University Institute for Public Opinion, which is leading the survey, told NPR on Monday.
Trump’s speech represents “a big opportunity for him to try to reconcile with the nation, but it’s a tall order when opinions about him are so entrenched,” Miringoff said, NPR reported.
WASHINGTON, DC – FEBRUARY 21: Late afternoon light shines on the White House on February 21, 2026 in Washington, DC. United States (Photo by Al Drago/Getty Images)
A dozen congressional Democrats announced Wednesday that they plan to boycott the president’s State of the Union address and will instead hold their own rally in Washington, DC.
Virginia Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger will give her party’s official response to Trump’s speech on Tuesday, according to a joint statement from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer released Feb. 19. California Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla is expected to give the Democratic response in Spanish on Tuesday, according to a Feb. 19 press release.
The NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll survey of 1,462 adults nationwide was conducted Jan. 27-30 by Marist Poll in partnership with NPR and PBS News. US adults were contacted via a multi-mode design: by telephone using live interviewers, by text message, or online.
The results for all adults (n = 1,462) are statistically significant at plus or minus 2.9 percentage points, while rThe results for registered U.S. voters (n=1,326) are statistically significant at plus or minus 3.0 percentage points.
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