More than 32 million people watched President Biden’s 2024 State of the Union address, according to Nielsen ratings released Friday. This is about 5 million more people than last year’s speech.
The president’s annual address to a joint session of Congress drew an estimated total audience of 32.2 million viewers on 14 television networks on Thursday night, according to Nielsen data.
Ratings were up 18% from last year’s 27.3 million viewers, making Biden’s latest State of the Union address the second most watched of his presidential term, behind his 2022 address, which was watched by 38 million people.
The majority of viewers (74%) were over 55 years old.
Only 5% of the coveted 18- to 34-year-old viewers watched the 81-year-old president’s speech.
More than half (56%) watched Biden’s State of the Union address live on a broadcast network such as CBS, ABC, NBC or FOX.
44% tune in to cable networks.
Fox News topped ABC with the largest share of viewers, 5.84 million vs. 5.24 million viewers, respectively.
In third place was NBC with 4.47 million viewers, MSNBC with 4.43 million viewers, CBS with 4.09 million viewers, CNN with 2.63 million viewers, and the Fox broadcast network with 1.77 million viewers.
Biden’s four annual addresses to Congress have averaged about 31.1 million viewers, far behind former President Donald Trump’s 44.7 million viewers, according to Nielsen data.
Biden’s speech averaged fewer viewers than the 38.3 million viewers who watched former President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address.
The president’s speech was criticized by Republicans for being hyper-partisan, and Republican lawmakers heckled Biden during the speech, during which he misspelled the name of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student who was allegedly killed by an illegal immigrant. and insulted Trump. And he called on the Senate to pass a border security bill that includes stalled aid to Ukraine and Israel.
