Democrats were counting on Joe Biden’s State of the Union address to give him a bump in the polls. Americans on both sides of the aisle have been expressing concerns over Joe Biden’s advanced age and cognitive decline. The devastating Hur report, which found that Joe Biden willfully retained, mishandled, and disclosed classified information but he is essentially too senile to stand trial, did him no favors either.
Last month, Axios explained exactly what was riding on Biden’s speech. "Biden officials see next month's State of the Union address as a big, public reset moment — a chance to overcome or at least neutralize concerns about President Biden's age and vitality."
USA Today described it as a chance to “reset” his presidential campaign against Trump, and NPR said it gave him an "opportunity and a big television audience to try to put to rest lingering questions from voters about whether he has what it takes to [serve] another four years in the highest office in the land."
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Naturally, the media did everything it could to give the impression that Biden’s State of the Union address was a roaring success, though they all forgot to put their unique spin on the White House talking points. There are endless examples of media outlets describing the speech as “fiery.”
So, it’s quite clear that a lot was riding on the State of the Union address, and Democrats ought to be panicking because new polling since the speech shows no bump at all.
Ahead of the State of the Union, Biden’s approval rating was 40 percent in a Yahoo News/YouGov poll. In a new survey, released Tuesday by the same duo, the president’s approval rating had fallen to 39 percent.
Also ahead of the State of the Union, former President Trump and Biden were statistically tied in a head-to-head 2024 match-up with 45 percent and 44 percent, respectively. In Tuesday’s poll, they are statistically tied with Trump at 46 percent and Biden at 44 percent.
Other polls also show the president failed to moved the needle following his address to Congress. FiveThirtyEight’s calculation of Biden’s approval rating showed him with just more than 37 percent Tuesday. On March 6, the day before the State of the Union, he had just under a 38 percent approval rating from the ABC News pollster.
Biden’s “fiery” performance (which is widely believed to have been due to medication) didn’t change voters' attitudes about his fitness for office, either. Fewer than 30% of respondents said that Biden was fit for a second term — essentially unchanged from their previous poll. Over 50% of participants also described the president as "mostly passive" in his role, down slightly from 54% in the prior survey.
Joe Biden officially clinched the Democratic Party nomination for president on Tuesday, so this news comes at a rather inconvenient time for the Democrats. Most people would agree that if the election were held today, Donald Trump would win. Now we know that the event Democrats hoped would change the state of the race failed to do so.
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