State of the Union: Inside the Numbers

I could go on ad nauseum about the seemingly never-ending line of exaggerations and flat out lies Donald Trump told in his first State of the Union address, and provide a grade for his performance, but I'm not going to do that. If you want a thorough fact-check of the speech, I recommend checking out Glenn Kessler's work at The Washington Post. As for me, I'm just going to look at a series of numbers today.

First off, the president's speech was just 10 minutes shy of breaking Bill Clinton's record of 1 hour 29 minutes. Having said that, while Clinton uttered 9,190 words in his 1995 speech, Donald Trump's speech was just 5,830 words long.

Clinton: 9,190 (words)/89 (minutes) = 103.3 words per minute (wpm)

Trump: 5,830/80 = 72.9 wpm

Now, granted, it's all but clear Donald Trump set the all-time record for self-standing ovations, but I digress. Let's now look at the approval ratings of the State of the Union address. Overall, the speech received rather positive grades. I'd estimate that approximately 7 in 10 viewers responded to it positively. Due to this, of course, Republicans are spinning this as a major win for the president and the party. But let's delve into the numbers a bit. First off, Nielsen has reported that 45.6 million people tuned into the speech, which is not a record, no matter how many times Trump claims it is. As a matter of fact, over the course of the past 25 years, it ranks 9th:

1) Clinton '93: 66.9 million
2) Bush, Jr. '03: 62.06
3) Clinton '99: 53.08
4) Obama: '09: 52.37
5) Bush Jr. '02: 51.77
6) Obama '10: 48.01
7) Trump '17: 47.74
8) Clinton '94: 45.8
9) Trump '18: 45.6

Of the 45.6 million who watched Trump's speech, 42% were Republican (19,152,000), 33% were Independent (15,048,000), and 25% were Democrat (11,400,000). There are 218,959,000 eligible voters in this country, which leaves over 173,359,000 whom didn't watch the speech. Among all eligible voters in this country, according to Gallup, 25% are registered Republican, 46% are registered as Independents, and 27% are registered as Democrats. Lastly, when it comes to Donald Trump's approval ratings, 87% of Republicans are on board with his tenure to this point, 33% of Independents agree, as too do 7% of Democrats. So taking all of those numbers into consideration, here's how the math works out:

Republicans
Total: 54,739,750
Watched the speech: 19,152,000
Left over: 35,587,750
Approve of Trump of those left over: 30,961,343

Democrats
Total: 59,118,930
Watched the speech: 11,400,000
Left over: 47,718,930
Approve of Trump of those left over: 3,340,325

Independents
Total: 100,721,140
Watched the speech: 15,048,000
Left over: 85,673,140
Approve of Trump of those left over: 28,272,136

Okay, so if we take 70% of 45.6 million, that comes out to be 31,920,000. If we add the remaining eligible voters who approve of the president, that comes out to be 62,573,804. Add those two together and we get 94,493,804. What percentage is that of the total, 218,959,000? 43.2%. According to RealClearPolitics, Trump's mean approval is approximately 41.5%, so that's just 1.7% higher. GOPers can try to spin things as much as they want, but it's highly unlikely Donald Trump's approval ratings will budge much due to his State of the Union address.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/sou_words.php

https://www.statista.com/statistics/252425/state-of-the-union-address-viewer-numbers/