The Initial reaction to the State of the Union...Was strong
Bottom Line: There are two sides to every story and one side to facts as I'll often remind you. Accredited polls aren't facts but they're approximations and that's good enough when we're gauging the impact of something like the President's State of the Union speech. The ratings for the speech are in and 45.6 million Americans saw the speech - btw, Fox News destroyed the competition...with 11.5 million viewers. NBC was second with 7.1 million (CNN had 3.1 million). So, of the 45+ million who tuned in how was the speech received?
There were two accredited pollsters in with results & here were the results:
CBS/YouGov:
75% positive
25% negative
CNN/SSRS:
70% positive
29% negative
So that's an average of 73% positive to 27% negative. To put it another way 33.3 million Americans held a positive view of the speech compared to 12.3 million who didn't. That's a really solid performance that even CNN can't deny (though they tried to as their headline on focused on those who said they were really positive compared to just positive about the speech - again you can't make this stuff up). And as for the issues that were held most positively...
Top three issues polled:
Infrastructure
Immigration
National security
That potentially bodes really well for all of the President's current priorities and wish lists and suggests that the President holds the upper hand with the immigration deal he's proposed in addition to funding goals for the military with next Thursday's deadline looming. Bottom Line. It was a big night and a big win for Trump.