Speech audience was most partisan since 2001

President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address drew a deeply Republican audience, which largely gave the President strong reviews for his address from the House chamber, according to a CNN poll conducted by SSRS immediately following the speech.

About 6 in 10 speech-watchers had very positive reactions to the President’s speech, better than the 48% who reacted that well last year and around the same as the 57% very positive mark in 2017. Those positive marks cut across demographic lines — with majorities of men (60%) and women (58%), under age 50 (54%) and those 50 or older (61%), and those with (52%) and without (63%) college degrees rating it “very positive.”

But the audience had the largest partisan tilt measured in any CNN instant poll following a presidential address to Congress dating back to 2001 — viewers were roughly 17 points more likely than the general public to identify as Republicans, and were largely fans of the President. In pre-speech surveys, 61% of speech-watchers said they approved of the job he was doing as President, compared with 40% in CNN’s latest representative survey of all American adults.