58 percent: The number of Americans who say they plan to watch President Obama‘s address to the joint session of Congress Thursday night, wherein he’ll lay out his jobs plan — a step up from the 40 percent of voters who plan to tune in for the early GOP presidential debate Wednesday night, according to a new Pew Research survey published Tuesday. It may not matter that President Obama moved the date of his speech this week to avoid a scheduling conflict with the NBC/Politico Republican debate, since each event is already drawing heavily on the partisan divide. A whopping 76 percent of Democrats say they plan to watch the president’s jobs speech, with only 30 percent in their ranks planning on watching the debate. And while 63 percent of Republicans are tuning into the debates, only 49 percent of them plan to also watch the president’s speech – this coming from a sample of 226 Republicans and 321 Democrats. Meanwhile, independents don’t seem as enthusiastic about the early GOP debates. Among the 341 independent voters surveyed, only 39 percent said they’ll tune in for the debates, while 52 percent said they’ll watch the president’s speech.
