President's Speech Gets Positive Response

Measures	Pre-Speech	Post-Speech	Shift (Post – Pre-Speech)
Obama Job Approval: Total Approve	50	58	+8
Obama Thermometer Rating: Total Warm	50	66	+16
Has Good Plans for the Economy: Total Describes Well	36	54	+18
Creating New Jobs:  Total Confident	34	52	+18
For the Middle Class:  Total Describes Well	42	66	+24
Energy: Total Confident	46	68	+22
Bridging the Partisan Divide and Bringing Americans Together: Total Confident	36	56	+20
Seems to Understand the Issues That are Important to My Life: Total Describes Well	42	62	+20
Makes Me Hopeful When I Hear Him Speak: Total Describes Well	38	66	+28

The graphic above is from Democracy Corps, who did some dial testing during the president's State of the Union speech and conducted interviews both before and after the speech. The people interviewed were a bipartisan group of voters from Denver, Colorado. This group obviously had a strong reaction -- a very positive reaction -- to the president's speech.

And that's not the only company that found a positive response to the speech. Knowledge Networks conducted a poll immediately after the president's speech for CBS News. They found that 91% of the people who heard the speech approved of it, while only 9% disapproved. That's an even higher approval than they found after last year's State of the Union speech.

Before the speech, 53% of respondents said they approved of the president's plans for the economy, but after the speech that rose to 82%. The poll interviewed 500 people and has a 4 point margin of error. Here are some of the other results:

Approved of Obama's Plan for the Deficit
before speech...............45%
after speech...............80%

Approved of Obama's Plan for Afghanistan
before speech...............57%
after speech...............83%

Thought Obama's Plan Would Create Jobs
before speech...............55%
after speech...............75%

Thought Obama Would Make U.S. More Competitive in World
before speech...............55%
after speech...............75%

Approved of Obama's Health Care Law
before speech...............56%
after speech...............65%

The president gave a pretty good speech Tuesday night. I liked most of it personally -- the economic parts, not the war parts. But whatever any of us thinks, it looks like the president did himself some good with the speech. And when you compare the president's speech to the insanity being put forward by the Republican candidates wanting his job, it looks even better. The president is not perfect, but I simply don't understand how anyone could think any of the Republican candidates would be even half as good.