Biden Speech Had 51% 'Very Positive' Reaction, Still Less Than Obama's, Trump's - Poll

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 29th April, 2021) Though 51% of US citizens who watched President Joe Biden's first speech to Congress received it very positively, it is still less than those who were in awe of the first addresses of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, according to a fresh poll conducted by the SQL Server Reporting Services for CNN.

Thursday marks Biden's "first 100 days" in office, a performance benchmark for new US presidents.

According to the CNN poll, Obama's speech in 2009 received a record 68% positive reaction among the nation. George W. Bush earned 66% in 2001, followed by Trump's 57% in 2017.

As for the optimism about the direction in which the country is going, Wednesday night's speech left 73% of Americans optimistic that the US was moving in the right direction and 27% of those who thought the opposite.

The pre-speech survey had these figures at 67% (right direction) and 33% (wrong direction), respectively.

As many as 86% of respondents said that Biden would handle the COVID-19 pandemic successfully, 74% said the same about racial injustice, 72% about economic policies, 70% about gun laws and taxes. About 6 out of 10 speech-watchers felt optimistic about immigration policies.

The post-speech survey was conducted through text messages among 589 adults who watched the Wednesday presidential address. The margin of error for this sampling size is within the range of 5.4%.

Biden's Gallup job approval rating currently sits at 57%, which is 16 points higher than that of his predecessor's in 2017, a margin many attribute to progress in the fight against COVID-19 and the economic recovery.