Obama: A post-speech poll bump?

last updated 8 January 2015

The early reaction suggests that President Obama's health-care speech was "a winner," said Steve Benen in Washington Monthly. A CNN poll found that two out of three Americans who watched Obama's health address to Congress now favor his health plans—a 14 percent gain. But take the poll results with "a grain of salt"—CNN's sample had a Democratic "tilt."

That's an understatement, said the National Review. Buried in CNN's report was the fact that 45 percent of the people it polled were Democrats, and only 18 percent were Republicans. "CNN's sloppy poll, not its numbers, is the real news story here."

CNN's "comically Democrat-oversampled" poll means nothing, said Jennifer Rubin in Commentary. "(Next time, they’ll just call relatives of the president.)" Obama may have stemmed some "panic on the Left" by showing his tough side, but the speech wasn't a game changer, judging by the way Democrats are focusing on the "contrived flap" over Rep. Joe Wilson's heckling of Obama, instead of what the president said.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Polling isn't the only way to tell whether Obama struck a chord, said Ben Parr in Mashable. An analysis of 9,300-plus posts on Twitter immediately after the address found that 36 percent of the tweets were positive, 32 percent negative, giving Obama an edge in a group that's probably a tad more liberal than the general population. "Whether this translates into comprehensive health-care reform being passed though ... we have no idea."

Subscribe to The Week

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox