Addressing his first divided Congress, Biden says 'the soul of this nation is strong'

Biden's remarks on Tuesday totaled roughly 7,300 words. That's on the high side historically, which led to a lengthy speech: Since Lyndon Johnson's first evening national address in 1965, the average word count is around 5,500 words. Now, those totals have varied quite a bit, ranging from Jimmy Carter's laconic 3,300 words in 1979 to Bill Clinton's loquacious 9,200 words in 1995. For his part, Biden's speech is slightly shorter than his first national address in 2021 (8,000 words) and last year's State of the Union (7,700).

Of course, different people speak at different rates, so what takes one person five minutes to say might take another eight. Not to mention, applause breaks have become commonplace. For his part, Biden's two previous speeches to Congress have each lasted a touch over an hour, and he came in a little above that mark again this evening. By comparison, Donald Trump's speeches contained somewhat fewer words than Biden's, ranging from 5,000 to 6,200 words. But Trump spoke for around one hour and 20 minutes in three of his four national addresses. Still, no one can rival the master of stemwinders: Clinton's final State of the Union, in 2000, lasted nearly one and a half hours.

-FiveThirtyEight's Geoffrey Skelley

Biden might like to imagine that his State of the Union address is not only a chance to lay out his agenda for the country but also an opportunity to change a few Republican minds.

However, odds are that Biden’s audience mostly consists of people who already agree with him about most things: Democrats.

In his first two addresses to joint sessions of Congress in 2021 and 2022 (the first technically wasn’t a State of the Union), polls found that around half of the viewership identified as Democrats, while around one-fifth to one-quarter identified as Republicans.

There isn’t anything unusual about this sort of partisan gap, though: Historically, people who identify with the president’s party are more likely to watch the State of the Union, based on polling since Bill Clinton’s presidency.

In other words, the State of the Union can sometimes verge on a pep rally, with the president working to animate his supporters in the room and at home with applause lines. Now, Biden also made bipartisan and even nonpartisan overtures in an effort to appeal across and beyond party lines. But as the trend in the chart above suggests, far fewer Republicans are likely watching his speech than Democrats.

-FiveThirtyEight’s Geoffrey Skelley

Biden called on Congress to "restore the right that was taken away in Roe v. Wade," referring to nationwide abortion access, to a huge round of applause from Democrats. The Supreme Court is usually the most popular branch of government. But over the past few years -- particularly since the high court overruled Roe last summer -- Americans' views have diverged sharply by party. A poll conducted last August found that perspectives on the Supreme Court were historically polarized, with a gaping 45-point gap between Republicans and Democrats.

The sharp divide was driven by a nosedive in Democrats' views of the court. In the poll, only 28% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents had a favorable view of the court in August, down nearly 40 points from 2020. The shift is undoubtedly related to the Supreme Court's right turn since the fall of 2020, when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by Amy Coney Barrett, who was the third justice to be appointed by former President Donald Trump. Barrett ended up being a critical vote in the case that overruled Roe.

-FiveThirtyEight's Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux

The president spent relatively little time in his speech talking about an issue that defined the first year of his presidency and the last year of his predecessor's time in office: COVID-19. Biden wrapped up remarks on the impacts of the pandemic throughout the nation, including the death of more than 1 million from the virus, and he said he would zealously seek to prosecute criminals who stole relief money meant to aid the nation through the depths of the virus' spread.

"And as we emerge from this crisis stronger, I'm also doubling down on prosecuting criminals who stole relief money meant to keep workers and small businesses afloat during the pandemic," Biden said.

"Now, let's triple our anti-fraud strike forces going after these criminals, double the statute of limitations on these crimes and crack down on identity fraud by criminal syndicates stealing billions of dollars from the American people."

Biden's remarks come after the GOP-led House Oversight Committee held its first hearing of the 118th Congress on COVID-19 "fraudsters" who engaged in the "massive waste, fraud and abuse in COVID relief programs."

"We owe it to the American people to get to the bottom of the greatest theft of American taxpayer dollars in history," Chairman James Comer said in his opening statement.