WASHINGTON, JAN 18 (DNA) – A majority of Americans think US President Donald Trump’s first year in office has been a failure and that he’s divided the nation, according to a new poll.

By a 53-to-40-percent margin, Americans deemed Trump’s first year a “failure,” the NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll released Wednesday finds. A third of Americans said Trump’s first year was a “major failure.”

And by a 61 to 32 percent margin, or nearly 2-to-1, Americans said they believe Trump has divided the country since his election.

Aside from handling the economy and the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group, most Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of almost every other issue, including the tax plan, the state of race relations, women’s rights, immigration, health care, the budget deficit and foreign policy.

“The first-year grades for Trump are not good,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion. “It’s not a pretty picture for the president after the first year.”

A majority of Americans, 53 percent, continue to disapprove of the job Trump is doing overall, while 57 percent think the country is headed in the wrong direction under him, the poll found.

An overwhelmingly percent of Americans, 60 percent, believe Trump’s policies are directed toward helping the wealthy as opposed to the middle class and 78 percent see his use of Twitter as a dangerous way to communicate that isn’t sending the right message.

Forty-two percent said the country has changed for the worse under this president; just 36 percent said it’s been changed for the better; and 21 percent said they’ve seen no real change at all.

A Gallup poll released Tuesday shows that Trump is wrapping up his first year in office with the lowest average approval rating of any elected president in his first year.

The persistence of Trump’s first-year blues is unprecedented for a president so early in his term. Americans usually give their new presidents the benefit of the doubt, but Trump’s “honeymoon period”, to the extent he had one, saw his approval rating only get as high as 45 percent.

Since then, Trump has spent more time under 40 percent than any other first-year president.