President Donald Trump is one day away from the one-year mark of his second term. Over the past week, CNN has rolled out a series of poll findings on where Americans stand on his performance so far.
It hasn’t been encouraging for Trump.
With all the results now out, we thought it worth reflecting on some of the big trends and lessons. Here are five major takeaways from the poll findings.
Trump has spent most of his first year back in office pursuing policies that tested America’s patience. But that’s especially pronounced now.
Even as Trump’s numbers fall, he continues to focus on majorly divisive initiatives that only seem to be deepening his political funk.
His ramped-up pursuit of Greenland is perhaps the most prominent example. The new CNN poll echoes others in finding that 75% of Americans oppose attempting to take control of the island, which is an autonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark.
While some Republicans appear to have warmed to the idea, nearly half (47%) still oppose it. And a whopping 82% of independents are opposed.
It bears emphasizing that this question isn’t about taking Greenland by military force; it’s about pursuing it at all.
Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdown in Minneapolis isn’t as unpopular, but it’s become abundantly clear that it’s a liability, too.
Americans said 56%-26% that the ICE agent who fatally shot Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis used force inappropriately, despite the administration going to the mat defending the agent and not even launching a full investigation of his actions.
And perhaps more troublingly, roughly half — 51% — said both that the agent’s actions were inappropriate and that “it reflects bigger problems with the way ICE is operating.”
They also said by 20 points that ICE’s enforcement actions are making cities less safe (51%) rather than safer (31%).
That suggests most Americans see this as a systemic problem.
It’s one thing to do such unpopular things; it’s another to do them by using deadly force — and the kinds of aggressive tactics we’re seeing in Minneapolis. Those are much harder for Americans to tune out.
And on the flip side, the polling also reinforced something we’ve seen elsewhere: that Americans would very much prefer Trump simply focus on something else entirely — specifically, lowering prices.
While majorities said Trump’s deportation efforts and moves on the world stage have “gone too far,” 64% say he has “not gone far enough” on trying to reduce the price of everyday goods.
That includes 69% of independents and nearly half (48%) of Republicans.
If there’s a two-word phrase that captures the first year of Trump’s second term, that’s it.
The CNN poll finds the following percentages think Trump has “gone too far” in each given area:
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51% on changing the way government works
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52% on deporting undocumented immigrants
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55% on using the military to achieve his goals
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57% on cutting federal programs
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58% on using presidential power
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59% on trying to leverage America’s power over other countries
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62% on making changes to cultural institutions like the Smithsonian and the Kennedy Center, which Trump recently sought to rename as the Trump Kennedy Center — without doing so legally
One of the reasons Trump suffered in his first term, the conventional wisdom went, was that people just got tired of the controversy and the constant provocations. It was too much. Trump was too much. Joe Biden ran against Trump in part on a plan to be more, well, boring.
“Remember when you didn’t have to think about the president every single day?” intoned the narrator in a 2020 Biden campaign ad.
Trump has been even more in-your-face in his second term. And Americans again seem to be asking for less.
Greenland is, of course, part of a broader effort by Trump. It’s a prominent piece of his moves to assert himself on the world stage and, more specifically, dominate the Western Hemisphere. This often involves threatening military intervention.
We’ve known for a while that Americans aren’t really on the same page. But this poll suggests something even more ominous for Trump: They don’t think he’s particularly good at it.
The CNN poll has asked repeatedly in recent years whether Americans think Trump is “an effective world leader.”
Americans were about evenly split on that question in 2023. They disagreed by 8 points in March 2025 (54%-46%). Today, they disagree by 17 points (58%-41%).
And 57% of Americans say Trump has “hurt America’s standing in the world” — up from 53% in July.
Those aren’t the numbers of a president whose international heft Americans have much regard for. It’s one thing to make foreign moves Americans don’t want; it’s another for people to think they’re counterproductive and harming our reputation.
The poll is a bit of mixed bag when it comes to the 2026 midterm elections, even as it’s clearly positive for Democrats.
It shows Democrats leading the generic congressional ballot — which measures which of the two major parties voters would be inclined to support in an upcoming election — by 5 points, 46%-41% among registered voters. That’s a decent margin, but it could arguably be bigger given Trump’s problems. It seems at least somewhat possible that the historically damaged Democratic brand is holding the party back.
But other aspects of the poll are more encouraging for the blue team — specifically, enthusiasm.
The poll shows 66% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters say they’re “extremely motivated” to vote this year, compared with just 50% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters.
This comes after the GOP had a 5-point advantage on this question just ahead of the 2024 election.
Enthusiasm is a big problem for the GOP, given we’ve seen over and over again how Trump’s supporters are inordinately unlikely to vote in elections that don’t feature him. And that looms large now.
The events of the last few weeks have largely obscured what happened last month with the Jeffrey Epstein files. The Justice Department still must release the vast majority of what it has. And it’s already blown the deadline.
The new poll is a reminder that this problem isn’t going anywhere.
Just 6% of Americans said they were satisfied with the level of disclosure we’ve seen thus far from the administration, compared with 49% who were dissatisfied.
There are some signs that people are moving on — Republicans, specifically. The poll shows 53% of them chose neither option and instead said it doesn’t matter either way to them, while another 14% said they hadn’t heard enough to offer an opinion. (This is pretty remarkable, given it was largely the right that was focused on this story in recent years — at least before it became a problem for Trump.)
But it’s clear that skepticism remains, including on the right. In fact, 42% of Republicans and 67% overall say the administration is “intentionally holding back some information that should be released.”
In other words, the vast majority of Americans and even many Republicans still think this is a cover-up. And given the administration has much to release — it said in a recent court filing that it’s only turned over about 1% of all files and is still working through the rest — that’s a problem.
