Poll: Obama's speech earns positive reviews, mostly from Democrats

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President Barack Obama’s speech calling for an end to partisan squabbling over the issue of health care reform generates positive reviews in a just released poll from CNN. These were the results from a survey of 427 adults who watched the speech last evening and shared their thoughts on Obama’s performance.

The top line results indicate that 56% of the viewers had a “very” positive reaction to the President’s speech and 77% gave at least a somewhat positive response. Only 21% indicated a reaction that was either somewhat or very negative. These findings have to be welcomed by President Obama and reform minded Democrats currently slipping in the health care debate according to most recent polls. Three recent surveys from CNN, AP-GFK and Rasmussen show the number of Americans disapproving of the way the President is handling the health care issue to be between 52-53%.

One noticeable quirk regarding the CNN poll of the President’s speech from last evening is the number of responses from each political party. According to the survey only 18% of viewers identified themselves as Republicans. 45% identified as Democrats with a large 37% claiming to be political independents. The huge disparity between Democrats and Republicans polled no doubt played a large role in the overwhelmingly positive numbers for Obama. Still after watching last night’s speech there is a clear increase in the confidence viewers have in the President and his policies regarding health care.

Thirteen percent more viewers are now in favor of the President’s plan to reform health care after watching his speech. There was also a ten-point jump from pre to post-speech in the number of those agreeing that Obama’s policies will move the country in the right direction.

Unfortunately the CNN survey does not show the exact numbers broken down by political party. With Republicans making up only 18% of viewers in this poll numbers tell us that only about 77 of them were sampled amongst the 427 total. Such a small sample from the GOP is hardly a representative figure. More importantly we don’t know exactly what those 77 Republicans felt about the speech although we can surmise that the 21% of negative responses come largely from the GOP camp.

Democrats making up 45% of the viewers questioned surely played an overwhelming role in the high numbers Obama generated from his speech. It would have been particularly interesting to see how independents, making up 37% of those polled, rated the affair. If for instance every Democrat gave Obama either a somewhat or very positive grade on the speech and every Republican gave him negative marks, we could speculate that over 90% of independents were won over by Obama last night. This of course seems unlikely so the true impact of the President’s speech remains a mystery at this moment.

Regardless of the poor sampling from this poll it seems obvious that a clear majority of Americans were impressed by President Obama’s words last evening. Whether his words fully reassured supporters or shifted the opinion of any doubters will likely not be revealed for many more days however. Stayed tuned.