Polling has been coming in on reaction to Obama’s speech and David Meadvin, former chief speechwriter for the U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Senate Majority Leader writes in a Guest Post on Political Wire that it’s a landslide:
The early returns are in, and it’s a landslide.
Snap polls (surveys with a small sample size taken immediately after a speech or event) almost always show a positive reaction to the State of the Union address. The reason is simple: if the President of the United States can’t make a persuasive argument — on the grandest platform in the world, with an hour of uninterrupted time — he’s doing something very wrong.
So it was no surprise that the post-State of the Union snap polls released last night and this morning showed a win for President Obama. What was surprising – more like jaw-dropping – was the lopsided degree of the President’s win.
Meadvin points to CBS and CNN polls which show extremely positive response but notes that the speech as “not a speech for the ages.” He goes on:
Why the disconnect between an overwhelming response and a relatively unexceptional speech? The answer doesn’t have much to do with what happened inside the Capitol building last night. Simply put, Americans are ready to like their president again. The pendulum is swinging back in his favor.
He explains why. Read the post in its entirety.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.