Two outlets tracking reactions to Tuesday's State of the Union address show that President Joe Biden's speech was received well by roughly seven in 10 Americans while also moving public opinion in his direction. In fact, both outlets found that Biden's appeal to the country moved the greater public, along with independents and soft partisans in his direction by roughly 20 points or even more.
CNN's poll found that a
72% majority of Americans reacted positively to Biden's address, with the percentage of viewers who said Biden's policies would move the country in the right direction increasing from 52% before the speech to 71% after the speech.
The progressive consortium Navigator Research
found even greater movement in a live-reaction dial group gauging how Las Vegas area swing voters and soft partisans responded to the speech in real-time.
Before the speech, just 17% of this presumably persuadable group of voters said the country was "headed in the right direction," but the sentiment got a 38-point bump after the speech to a 55% majority saying things are heading in the right direction.
Biden's favorability rating among the group also got a dramatic nearly 20-point bounce, from 38% pre-speech to 57% post-speech.
Likewise, views of the president's handling of the economy increased roughly 20 points, from 31% approval to 52% approval.
Two topics where President Biden both needed the most improvement with these swingy voters and got it were on questions of whether he's trying to bring people together and if he's up to the job of being president.
In both cases, just 35% of them said pre-speech that Biden sought to bring people together and was up to the job, but he got a post-speech bump of 30 points (65%) on the question of bridge building and 20 points (55%) on the question of being up for the job.
