The reviews are starting to come in. And forget about the pundits and the blogs: these reviews come straight from the American people:
• 83% of speech watchers approve of the proposals the president made in his speech tonight. 17% Disapprove.
• 70% of speech watchers think Barack Obama shares the same priorities for the country as they do. 57% thought so before the speech.
More.
This instant poll comes courtesy of CBS News, and the results are very good:
• 59% of speech watchers think that Barack Obama has a clear plan for creating jobs. 40% thought so before the speech.
• 72% of speech watchers approve of Barack Obama's plans for dealing with government spending. 28% Disapprove.
• 56% of speech watchers think Barack Obama's economic plans will reduce the budget deficit in the long run, and 71% think they will help ordinary Americans.
We all knew that President Obama's approval would go up following the SOTU. This is pretty standard for this address, though if a president is deeply unpopular, and people are tired of hearing from him (see: Bush, George W.), it's been known to have little to no effect. But if this instant poll is to be trusted, it shows that ordinary Americans liked what they saw tonight.
This president can still move people when he speaks directly to them, and bypasses the noise machine comprised of the traditional media, and yes, the blogs. Unfiltered, President Obama is a very persuasive speaker, and people like what he has to say. The election proved that, as do his approval ratings, which remain stubbornly high despite unrelenting bad press and bad economic times.
The question, as always, is what specific measures will come from these proposals. If Obama can deliver on even part of what he talked about tonight, the American people are clearly behind him.
Here are the specifics on the CBS poll:
522 speech watchers participated in the poll. The margin of error was 4 percent.
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UPDATE -- A few commentors have pointed out that the CBS poll cited above heavily favored Democrats and Obama supporters, which makes sense given that those are the people one would expect to watch the speech to begin with. But now Democracy Corps has conducted their own focus group, and this is some of what they found:
This difficult audience for Obama was a heavily Republican-leaning group (46 percent Republican, 20 percent Democratic) that split their votes in 2008 (52 percent Obama, 46 percent McCain) but had moved away from him over the past year, with majorities expressing disapproval with his job performance and unfavorable views of him on a personal level.
Obama saw a substantial, but not overwhelming, spike in his overall numbers with his personal favorability rating and job approval both increasing by 16 points.
And check out this amazing number:
Entering the evening, swing voters in this group agreed with a 48 to 16 percent plurality saying Obama "puts Wall Street ahead of the middle class." But after the speech, the number disagreeing with that statement jumped a remarkable 50 points, to 66 percent.