Ratings Soar For Biden’s State Of The Union—More Than 32 Million Watched Address

 

President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress.

President Joe Biden’s high stakes State of the Union address was watched by an estimated 32.2 million viewers, according to Nielsen data, exceeding last year’s viewership by nearly 5 million people across 14 television networks.

The 32.2 million viewers marks an 18% increase from the estimated 27.3 million people who watched Biden’s address last year.

56% of viewers watched the address through network coverage like CBS, NBC and PBS while the remaining 44% watched on cable networks, Nielsen reported.

Viewers aged 55 and older accounted for nearly 75% of the State of the Union’s viewership followed by viewers aged 35-54 (19%) and viewers aged 18-34 (5%).

The 32 million viewers still stand behind Biden’s 2022 State of the Union address, which had 38.2 million viewers.

TANGENT

Several streams of the State of the Union were hosted online by various news outlets, collectively garnering millions of views on YouTube. The White House’s livestream generated 1.5 million views alone.

CONTRA

Former President Donald Trump planned a live “Play by Play” rebuttal of Biden’s address on his alternative social media platform. The live reaction didn’t go according to plan, with Truth Social experiencing outages and glitches minutes into the address.

KEY BACKGROUND

One of the most pressing points of Biden’s address was the Israel-Hamas war. The president announced the U.S. military will construct a temporary port along Gaza’s coast designated for humanitarian aid in the region, where at least half of buildings have been damaged or destroyed as more than 30,000 have been killed, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. Biden also criticized the GOP over the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, the overturning of Roe v. Wade and addressed immigration, urging Republicans to pass the bipartisan border bill that failed in the Senate last month.