Despite the outsized media attention that a president’s performance at the State of the Union/Joint Address to Congress gets, it’s best to appreciate it as little more than a show for partisans. Swing voters don’t watch these events. Neither do voters of the opposing party. If you hate Trump, you didn’t tune in. If you watched all 100 minutes of the address, odds are that you are a Trump fan.
That means you shouldn’t take polls showing almost universally positive reactions to Trump’s address as an accurate reflection of his overall standing with voters. CNN’s polling and analytics editor Ariel Edwards-Levy noted that their own poll, which surveyed only those who watched the address and found approval of Trump’s speech at 69%, “was about 14 percentage points more Republican than the general public.” In fact, Levy goes on to write, “in CNN’s speech reaction polls, which have been conducted most years dating back to the Clinton era, audience reactions have always been positive.”
The behavior of the political figures gathered in the House chamber on Tuesday night was a more
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