President Biden saw little boost in his public polling after his state of the union, as many voters express dissatisfaction with the offerings of candidates in the 2024 presidential election.

Mr. Biden’s address last week, widely described as a campaign speech, failed to give him an edge over President Trump, according to the first major national poll conducted since the speech. Though the 1,000 registered voters surveyed by Suffolk University/USA TODAY are expressing more confidence in the economy, 40 percent say they support the former president, while 38 percent support Mr. Biden.

This polling comes as a growing number of Americans appear unenthusiastic about the general election matchup. Both Trump and Biden have 55 percent unfavorable ratings, the poll discloses. Sixteen percent of respondents said they would prefer other candidates, including independents Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West and the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein.

Though presented as Washington’s Super Bowl, State of the Union addresses tend to have little political impact. According to calculations from the website FiveThirtyEight, presidential approval since 1988 has, on average, increased by about half a percentage point a week after giving that annual address.

Part of the issue is that fewer Americans are watching the speech each year. This year, 32.2 million people watched Mr. Biden’s address on broadcast or cable television Thursday night, according to Nielsen Market Research. That’s up from the 27.3 million people who watched in 2023, yet far from the some 62 million people who watched President George W. Bush’s address in 2003, when he made the case for invading Iraq.

What differentiates 2024 from past presidential cycles is the level of unpredictability among many dissatisfied American voters. Some 43 percent of Republican voters in the Suffolk poll describe themselves as “excited” to vote for Mr. Trump, while just 22 percent of Democrats said they felt that way about a potential re-nomination of Mr. Biden. In what the pollsters describe as a “wild card,” a quarter of respondents said they may change their minds before November.