CNN Poll: More than 6 in 10 SOTU viewers had a positive reaction to Biden’s speech

More than 6 in 10 Americans who watched President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address had a positive reaction to the speech, according to a CNN Poll conducted by SSRS, with a smaller 35% reacting very positively.

That pattern of widespread but tempered positivity mirrors the reception for Biden’s speeches in previous years. Last year, 72% of viewers reacted positively, with 34% saying their reaction was very positive – the lowest “very positive” number in CNN’s polling dating back to 1998. In 2022, 71% had a positive reaction, with 41% saying their reaction was very positive.

As in the past two years, Democratic speech watchers’ reactions to Biden were almost universally positive, with about two-thirds of independents who tuned in offering a positive reaction. Roughly three-quarters of Republicans who watched this year’s address offered a negative review, up from about 6 in 10 for Biden’s past two State of the Union addresses.

Americans who watched on Thursday said, 62% to 38%, that the policies Biden proposed will move the US in the right direction, rather than the wrong direction. In a survey conducted before the speech, just 45% of those same people said Biden’s policies would move the US in the right direction.

Just over 6 in 10 Americans who tuned in expressed at least some confidence in Biden to protect American democracy, while 59% say they have at least some confidence in Biden’s overall ability to carry out his duties as president. Thirty-six percent of those who watched the speech said they have a lot of confidence in Biden to protect American democracy, with 27% expressing some confidence and 37% saying they have no real confidence in him.

Following the speech, 31% of those who watched said they have a lot of confidence in Biden’s ability to carry out his duties as president, 28% that they have some confidence, and 41% that they have no real confidence. That’s a slight uptick from a survey conducted in the days before the speech, when 25% of those same people expressed a lot of confidence in his ability, 27% some confidence, and 48% none at all.

Much of Biden’s improvement on this score came among political independents who watched the speech. Before the speech, 51% of independents expressed at least some confidence in Biden’s ability to carry out his duties, and that rose to 68% among the same group of independents after the speech. Perceptions of Biden’s ability to carry out the duties of the presidency did not change significantly among either Democrats or Republicans who tuned in.

Good marks from speech-watchers are typical for presidential addresses to Congress, which tend to attract generally friendly audiences that disproportionately hail from their own party. In CNN speech reaction polls dating back to the Clinton era, audience reactions have always been positive. But State of the Union addresses rarely lead to significant shifts in presidential approval among the broader American public, particularly in recent years.

A 56% majority of Americans who watched the address said that Biden’s economic policies will move the US in the right direction, with 44% saying that his policies will move things in the wrong direction. That’s an improvement from the survey conducted prior to the speech, when 55% of those same people said Biden’s economic proposals would move things in the wrong direction, with much of that movement also coming among independents, from 41% right direction in the pre-speech poll to 61% after the speech. Following last year’s State of the Union, however, a larger 66% majority of those who watched that speech said Biden’s economic policies would move the country in the right direction; in 2022, that number was 62%.

About half (53%) of Americans who watched the address said that Biden’s immigration policies will move the US in the right direction, up from 42% in the pre-speech survey. Here, the pre-speech to post-speech change included a shift among both Democrats (from 71% to 83% right direction) and independents (from 42% to 56%).

About half of State of the Union viewers, 52%, said that Biden’s proposed policies supporting abortion rights are about what they should be, according to the CNN poll of speech watchers conducted by SSRS. Another 29% said that his policies go too far, and 19% that they don’t go far enough.

Roughly half of speech watchers, 53%, also said that the level of US support Biden proposes offering to Israel is about right, with 28% saying he’s proposing too much support, and 20% not enough. And a similar 49% of those who tuned in said Biden’s proposed levels of US aid for Ukraine are about right, with 34% saying Biden’s proposed level of Ukraine aid is too much, and 16% that it’s not enough.

A 42% plurality of speech watchers younger than 45 said that Biden’s proposals offer too much support to Israel, an opinion shared by just 22% of viewers age 45 and older. There’s a more modest age divide on Biden’s proposed level of aid to Ukraine.

The CNN poll was conducted by text message with 529 US adults who said they watched the State of the Union on Thursday, and are representative of the views of speech-watchers only. Respondents were recruited to participate before the speech, and were selected by a survey of members of the SSRS Opinion Panel, a nationally representative panel recruited using probability-based sampling techniques. Results for the full sample of speech-watchers have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.6 percentage points.

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