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

President Biden spent some time in his speech outlining the ways that last year’s Inflation Reduction Act is addressing health care. Polls show that Americans care a lot about reducing health costs, and they tend to think that prescription drug prices are too high.

The Inflation Reduction Act tackles prescription drug prices in a few ways. For one thing, it requires the government to negotiate for some drugs that are covered under Medicare. It also limits monthly co-pays for insulin and it will cap out-of-pocket drug costs for Medicare recipients down the road.

That could make a big difference for the significant share of older Americans who take prescription drugs. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis, prices increased faster than inflation between 2019 and 2020 for half of drugs covered by Medicare.

-FiveThirtyEight's Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux

President Biden drew several red lines as he addressed the new Republican majority in the House.

On health care, Biden said if anyone tried to "do anything to raise the cost of prescription drugs" -- like repeal the Inflation Reduction Act provisions -- he would veto it. He said the same if lawmakers passed a national abortion ban, prompting cheers from Democrats.

Biden also delivered a firm stance on Social Security and Medicare, calling them a "lifeline for millions" that he won't let be taken away, which leading Republicans have echoed.

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