On Tuesday night, following President Biden’s State of the Union speech, Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, boasted that according to a CBS News poll, 78% of voters approved of the speech.
Per @CBSNews poll, 78% of voters approved of @POTUS #SOTU, and a strong majority believe that the President's agenda to attack inflation will work! pic.twitter.com/WJXW2QmwzH
— Ronald Klain (@WHCOS) March 2, 2022
In his haste to celebrate what he thought was a moment of triumph, Klain neglected to mention the true statistic: CBS News reported that it wasn’t 78% of voters who approved of the speech, but 78% of people who actually watched the speech.
CBS News admitted reluctantly, “As we’ve seen with previous presidents’ State of the Union speeches, those who watched tonight are more likely to be from the president’s own political party, boosting approval of the speech.” As the leftist site Vox wrote in 2019, “Generally, a greater proportion of people who watch the State of the Union address tend to be from the president’s party.”
Even a data journalist with CBS News came out and criticized Klain for his blatant inaccuracy; Kabir Khanna, a data journalist with CBS News on the network’s Decision Desk/Election & Survey Unit, tweeted, “Looks like someone choosing fiction over science… We conducted a poll of self-reported speech watchers across the country, not voters.”
Looks like someone choosing fiction over science…
We conducted a poll of self-reported speech watchers across the country, not voters
So no, 78% of U.S. voters didn't approve
78% approved *among people who tuned in tonight*
It was a partisan audience as usual: 49% Democrats https://t.co/zpvOFvhfIE
— Kabir Khanna (@kabir_here) March 2, 2022
As FiveThirtyEight showed on its website on Wednesday, Biden’s disapproval numbers rated at 53.6%; they have been hovering at roughly 53% for over a month.
The Daily Wire reported in late January:
White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain is taking heat from moderate Democrats and leaders in Congress over President Joe Biden’s failure to move key administrative priorities forward.
Klain is widely seen as a friend to the progressive wing of the party that pushes ideas such as universal healthcare and defunding police departments. The White House chief of staff’s apparent cozy disposition toward the Democratic Party’s extreme Left has soured many of the party’s moderate members, according to reports.
NBC News interviewed dozens of administration officials, congressional officials, and Democratic allies on Klain’s popularity on Capitol Hill. According to the outlet: “The main criticisms of Klain, whether from current or former Biden staff members or those who consider themselves allies of the president, flow from a single idea: that Biden has strayed from his core brand as a pragmatic, empathetic politician who won the Democratic nomination as a moderate willing to compromise. They see Klain as the person responsible for that. His ubiquitous presence on Twitter has solidified that view, particularly for those who see it as being out of step with a 2020 campaign that deliberately tuned out cable news pundits and ‘blue checks’ on social media.”
The White House defended Klain’s record to NBC News, saying that much criticism of the White House chief of staff is driven by “politics, personal score-settling and constraints that the coronavirus has put on Biden’s ability to reach out,” according to NBC News.