What’s also true is that State of the Union speeches almost always receive strongly favorable views, in part because viewership tends to draw disproportionately from their allies.
The 65 percent who had a positive view of the speech was actually lower than any such speech CNN has polled in the past quarter-century — the previous low being Donald Trump’s 2018 address (70 percent).
And the 35 percent who offered a “very” positive review was effectively tied with Biden’s speech last year (34 percent) for the lowest on record. The next lowest were Biden’s 2022 speech and George W. Bush’s 2007 speech, which each earned “very” positive marks from 41 percent of viewers.
