Partisan viewers drive approval of State of the Union
More than three-quarters of Americans who watched President Donald Trump's State of the Union on Tuesday approved of the speech he delivered.
According to a CBS News poll, 76 percent of viewers approved of the address, while 24 percent disapproved of it. Loyal supporters are more likely to watch a president's speech and according to a CNN poll, the audience for Tuesday's speech was the most partisan since 2001 making the results more favorable for the president.
Forty-three percent of viewers identifying as Republican and 24 percent identifying as Democrats. Thirty percent were independents, according to CBS.
Approval among Republicans was much higher than among Democrats, 97 percent compared to just 30 percent. Eighty-two percent of independents approved.
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In the CNN poll conducted by SSRS, 59 percent of viewers had very positive reactions to Trump's State of the Union. Only 48 percent had the same reaction to last year's address. However, approval among different demographics varied. Sixty percent of men and 58 percent of women, 54 percent of people under 50 and 61 percent of people older than 50 all positively reacted to the speech.
A strong partisan divide was also seen in CNN's poll. Viewers were 17 points more likely than the general public to identify as Republicans and were mostly fans of Trump. Most of these viewers (87 percent) rated the speech as very positive, compared to 64 percent of Democrats who rated the speech very or somewhat negative.
According to the CNN poll, about two-thirds of viewers considered the president's proposals to be in line with the Republican party, while about 25 percent considered them to be too conservative.
Going forward, a little more than half of viewers (56 percent) believe Trump's speech will unite the country, while 8 percent think it will divide it and 36 percent think it won't change anything, according to the CBS poll.
Both polls found that just a little more than one-third of the audience believes Trump will increase cooperation between Democrats and Republicans.
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