President Donald Trump’s longest-ever State of the Union pleased Republican audiences but left many unconvinced of his dedication to lower prices or address stubborn cost-of-living concerns with 250 days to go until the midterm elections.
A post-speech poll by CNN found nearly two-thirds of the GOP-leaning audience to have had at least a “somewhat positive” reaction to the lengthy address, with only 38 percent reporting a “very positive” reaction — far fewer than the nearly 70 percent who reported at least a “somewhat positive” reaction to Trump’s address to Congress the previous year.
While a similar survey taken before Trump’s address found that Americans wanted to hear Trump talk about his plans to address the high cost of living, the CNN poll taken after his speech determined that nearly half of viewers — 45 percent — reported that he spent too little time on those issues, though a bare majority of 53 percent gave him credit for “the right amount of focus.”
Of those who watched the speech, only 31 percent said they had ‘a lot’ of confidence that Trump would make the cost of living more affordable, the poll found.
The president’s record-length speech, his sixth address to a joint session of Congress, mixed sweeping optimism with a string of bold claims about the nation’s economic health, border security and global standing.
Trump opened by claiming that the country is “bigger, better, richer and stronger than ever before” after his first year back in the White House and bragged of having achieved “a transformation like no one has ever seen before and a turnaround for the ages” as he claimed to have solved all of the problems that led voters to return him to power.
“Inflation is plummeting, incomes are rising fast, the economy is roaring like never before,” he said as Republicans in the House and Senate dutifully applauded his boasts about gasoline prices, mortgage rates and a claimed $18 trillion in foreign investment into the U.S. since his inauguration last January.
At the same time, he mocked Democrats for their focus on “affordability” by calling the term “a word they just used” that “somebody” had “given to them” while blaming the opposition for having “created the high prices” that persist a year into his second term.
Recent polling results show voters have significant doubts about his priorities and increasingly are questioning whether Trump’s policy initiatives are helping solve the problems he was re-elected to tackle.
One survey from CNN released Monday found that a supermajority of Americans — 61 percent — say his policies will send the country in the wrong direction, while only 36 percent approve of his performance. That’s a 12-point drop from the 48 percent approval rating Trump enjoyed when he last addressed Congress.
What’s more, the independent voters who broke in large numbers for him and Vice President JD Vance in 2024 have abandoned Trump in droves, with 26 percent indicating approval of his performance.
It’s even worse among Latino voters: last year, 41 percent of Latinos approved of the president’s job performance; now, only 22 percent say they do.
And on what was once one of his strongest issues, the economy, 57 percent of Americans say they disapprove of Trump; in a separate ABC News/Washington Post poll on inflation and tariffs, that’s even higher, at 65 and 64 percent, respectively.
