It almost seems like they were setting him up.
The commentariat was unanimous and unambiguous: This year’s State of the Union speech would likely be the most important of Joe Biden’s presidency.
Politico wisely demurred on the significance of previous such addresses but created an exception for 2024. “The State of the Union may be one of the most vastly overrated speeches in all of politics. But not this year.”
By Monday, NBC analysts were shaking their heads — “Eleven days have now passed since Biden’s State of the Union address, and the first polls conducted since then have been clear: The president’s numbers have barely budged.”
President Biden delivered a terrific speech. He was feisty and energetic, strong and empathetic. He communicated his accomplishments, laid out an agenda for the future and demarcated vital differences with Donald Trump and his band of Republican supporters.
But should anyone have expected numbers to budge?
Not those who pay attention to history.
Only rarely do State of the Union speeches meaningfully improve presidential approval ratings.
Since 1978, according to Gallup data, the average State of the Union produced literally zero change in the president’s approval rating. Hard to get any smaller.
In 16 cases, approval ratings improved in the immediate aftermath of the State of the Union and in an ever so slightly larger number (17), approval ratings worsened.
Just five addresses yielded improvements of 4 percentage points or more. Master communicator and former President Bill Clinton delivered three of those five.
Though pundits labeled him the “Great Communicator,” not one of President Reagan’s State of the Union addresses produced increases of more than 3 points, while his SOTUs generated declines of 4 points or more in two instances.
Former President Trump improved his standing with the American public in the wake of just one of his State of the Union speeches, and by just 2 points.
Yet, CNN’s instant poll of this year’s speech watchers found 65 percent expressing a positive reaction to what they heard, not a personal best for President Biden but better than Trump ever got, and better than all but the first of President Obama’s addresses.
However, while approval ratings are correlated with a variety of political outcomes, these questions, measuring reactions to what people heard, are uncorrelated with anything meaningful, including changes in approval.
The two highest scores on these questions were recorded by President Biden in 2021 and President Bush in 2001.
Both suffered declines in their approval ratings following those speeches. So, this oft quoted statistic not only tells us nothing meaningful, but it can also result in a net loss of knowledge.
Why the disconnect between the importance attached to these addresses by commentators and their impact on the public?
First, size matters. The assumption is that big audiences mean big effects. According to Neilsen, more than 32 million Americans watched President Biden’s SOTU this year. That’s a big number, but it’s only 12 percent of American adults.
Even big movements in a small swath of the country would produce a limited overall effect. If a president raised his approval rating a vast 20 points among 12 percent of the population, he’d get a boost of less than 2.5 points in the country as a whole (assuming non-watchers didn’t move).
Second, in our highly polarized society very few people are open to changing their views. Biden supporters already like him and Biden haters, well, hate him and aren’t really open to persuasion.
Third, those watching are concentrated in a particularly hard to move demographic — older people. Their political habits are by now rather deeply ingrained. Some 74 percent of the audience was 55 or older, while just 5 percent were18 to 34.
Finally, the instant surveys are, as they say, instant. It takes a tightly closed mind to leave an hour-long presidential pitch completely unmoved. Indeed, some 30 percent of Republican speech viewers reacted positively to President Biden’s latest SOTU.
But as Republican leaders take to the airwaves suggesting flaws and failings, distortions and disagreements, voters quickly settle back into their preexisting attitudes.
President Biden delivered a great speech, galvanizing Democrats, demonstrating he’s still at the top of his game, giving his troops talking points and marching orders.
But thinking a State of the Union speech will move numbers is fantasy in light of the historical precedents.
That takes, among other things, a full-fledged campaign, which is exactly what’s coming up.
Mellman is president of The Mellman Group and has helped elect 30 U.S. senators, 12 governors and dozens of House members. Mellman served as pollster to Senate Democratic leaders for over 20 years, as president of the American Association of Political Consultants, a member of the Association’s Hall of Fame, and is president of Democratic Majority for Israel.