President Trump’s job approval rating increased following Tuesday’s State of the Union Address, the latest Hill-HarrisX poll found.
Forty-seven percent of registered voters contacted Thursday and Friday said that they approved of Trump’s job performance, an increase of three points from the 44 percent who said the same last week.
Initial polls showed many who watched Trump’s address liked it.
A CBS News-YouGov poll conducted the night of the speech found that 76 percent of respondents who watched said they approved of it. As would be expected, GOP respondents who viewed the address approved of it but almost one-third of Democratic viewers contacted for the survey said they approved of it.
The Hill-HarrisX survey showed Trump getting a jump in Democratic support after the address. In the poll before his address, 15 percent of Democratic voters said they approved of the president. Twenty percent said they approved of him in the poll after the address.
“I think he gets a little bit of a bump because it was a non-Republican speech,” Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a Washington Post political data analyst, said Friday on Hill.TV’s show, “What America’s Thinking.”
“It was conciliatory, at least that’s how people who aren’t inexorably opposed to him would have seen it,” he continued. “I also think that presidents tend to see an approval rating, after a shutdown is concluded, they tend to see a bump back to their previous levels. And I think you’re beginning to register that.”
Republican voters also warmed slightly to Trump after the speech. His rating from GOP respondents increased to 85 percentage points from 81 percent in the Feb. 1-2 survey.
Trump’s rating from independent voters remained essentially the same across both polls. Forty-two percent of independent respondents approved of him before the address while 41 percent did so afterwards.
Historically, presidents have received slightly higher job approval numbers immediately after delivering State of the Union addresses but they tend not to have a long-term effect on their public support.
—Matthew Sheffield
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