CBS News
CBS News
Poll: Viewers Call Trump’s Speech To Congress ‘Presidential’ And ‘Unifying’
March 1, 2017
12:10 PM
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) — Viewers across the country strongly approved of President Donald Trump’s first address to Congress Tuesday night, with many Democrats
joining Republicans in calling it “presidential,” according to a new CBS News poll.
The poll found that 82
percent of total speech watchers said Trump’s address was “presidential” while
71 percent called it “unifying.”
When broken down, the poll found 97 percent of Republicans, 54 percent of Democrats and
88 percent of Independents say Trump came across as “presidential” in his
speech.
Half of Democrats did find the speech “divisive” but about
one-third of them also said Trump was “specific” and “knowledgeable,” according
to the poll.
Eighty-seven percent of
Republicans, 19 percent of Democrats and 66 percent of Independents found the
president’s tone to be “very positive” while 18 percent of Democrats and 87
percent of Republicans “strongly approved” of the president’s message.
The president also saw
double digit gains in approval of his views on terrorism, Obamacare, crime, the
economy and immigration, the poll found.
Wednesday morning, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer appeared less than impressed with what he
called dissonance between the president’s words and actions.
“This is another one of
his speeches,” he said. “He talks like a populist but he is governing from the
far right.”
But Vice President Mike Pence said the country saw the president’s true colors.
“President Trump is someone
who leads by collaboration,” Pence said. “He brings people together and last
night he really challenged the Congress to come together to solve these
intractable problems that frankly, we’ve ignored for decades.”
Meanwhile, Twitter says
some 3 million tweets were sent about Trump’s speech Tuesday night. The numbers
make it the most tweeted speech by a president to Congress in the relatively
short history of the platform.
The previous mark was
2.6 million tweets.
The top tweeted moment was the Republican’s call to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. That was
followed by Trump’s salute to Carryn Owens, the widow of Senior Chief William “Ryan” Owens, who was killed last
month in Yemen
Google says the top
trending question users asked during the night was “who wrote Donald Trump’s
speech?” People also wanted to know how tall the president is and whether he’s
a Democrat or a Republican.
The CBS News poll was conducted immediately after the conclusion
of the President’s Address to Congress by re-contacting a scientifically
sampled panel of Americans who had first been interviewed in the days leading
up to the speech, and had stated that they planned to watch. A total of 857
speech watchers were interviewed. The margin of error for the total sample is
4.2 points.
(© Copyright 2017 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this
report.)
