How did President Biden fare following his first address to Congress on Wednesday night?
Early data from Nielsen Media Research reveals that some 22.6 million viewers tuned in to see what he had to say.
In contrast, 43 million viewers watched then-President Donald Trump’s first speech to a joint session, which he delivered on Feb. 28, 2017.
“That’s a drop of 47%,” noted Deadline Hollywood, an industry source.
Mr. Trump also bested Mr. Biden in another face-off. A CNN poll of verified speech-watchers released Thursday found that 51% of the respondents gave Mr. Biden a positive review of his speech. Mr. Trump, however, received a 57% positive rating in 2017, according to the network.
“The 51% who had a very positive reaction to Biden’s speech is a bit more muted than reaction to the first address from other recent presidents,” wrote CNN polling director Jennifer Agiesta. “Barack Obama had the strongest first outing of the last four presidents, with 68% saying they had a very positive reaction to his speech, and George W. Bush in 2001 earned a similar 66% very positive. Fewer — 57% — had a very positive reaction to Donald Trump’s 2017 address.”
CNN’s chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju also cited the the poll via Twitter, posting a CNN screen image of the results.
“View of speech watchers, per CNN poll. The speech watchers tonight overall leaned Democratic,” Mr. Raju tweeted.
The CNN/SSRS poll was conducted by text message with 589 U.S. adults who said they watched the presidential address Wednesday, the network said.
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