State of the Union Audience

Thank you for all of the nice compliments and reviews on the State of the Union speech. 45.6 million people watched, the highest number in history. @FoxNews beat every other Network, for the first time ever, with 11.7 million people tuning in. Delivered from the heart!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 1, 2018

John Wagner at WP:

That number matched a figure released by Nielsen based on viewership on 12 broadcast networks and cable channels.

But it was smaller than those who watched Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress last year (48 million) and smaller than those who watched former President Obama’s first State of the Union address in 2010 (48 million) and smaller than those who watched Obama’s joint session speech in 2009 (52 million).

The Nielsen numbers do not include data on streaming, which has significantly grown in popularity in recent years. But the figure Trump cites for Tuesday’s viewership does not include streaming data, which is difficult to measure.