DNC night one ratings beat RNC by 21 percent despite late Biden speech

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Louise Thomas

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The first night of the ongoing Democratic National Convention in Chicago had signficantly better ratings than the opening of the Republican National Convention last month, according to overnight data.

The DNC had 11.4 percent of sampled households watching in 44 major metro areas across seven networks on Monday, compared with the RNC’s 9.4 percent rating, a difference of over 20 percent, according to TV analyst Michael Mulvihill, president of insights and analytics at FOX Sports, FOX Entertainment, and Tubi.

In a statement on X, the analyst warned that the data was just preliminary.

“That DNC lead will likely narrow in the final national viewership and could even be erased, though that seems unlikely,” he wrote. “The overnights reflect 44 major metro areas.”

Some running the DNC surely were concerned that delays caused Joe Biden to give his highly anticipated convention speech at 11:25 pm on Monday, well past when some voters in East Coast battleground states like Pennsylvania were in bed.

That didn’t seem to make a huge difference, according to Mulvilhill.

“The late-running DNC show did not help viewership for President Biden,” he added on X. “The Biden portion rated slightly (-2%) lower than the pre-Biden portion and the President’s forceful speech lost audience as the hour grew later. Not ideal but not disastrous either.”

The initial, encouraging signs for the DNC come as Donald Trump is reportedly concerned Kamala Harris’s Thursday speech to close out the convention will outshine Trump’s RNC send-off.

Two sources close to the Trump campaign told Rolling Stone the former president has brought up the topic multiple times, though he’s sure to mention the “tremendous” viewership of his own nomination speech, which attracted a peak of 28.4 million viewers, according to Nielsen.

In response to the report, the Trump campaign told the magazine, “Voters know Kamala is weak, failed, and dangerously liberal, and the Democrat ticket is the most radical in American history.”

Media observers say the 2024 race is likely to be one of the most dramatic in US history, especially when compared with the 2020 election, which was held under the shadow of the Covid pandemic. There’s already been a candidate swap and an assassination attempt, and we’re still months away from November.

“I look at these two campaigns right now as the fiercest competing political reality shows I’ve ever seen,” Professor Frank Sesno, director of strategic initiatives at the GW School of Media and Public Affairs, toldUSA TODAY. “There’s so much drama on both sides, there’s so much tension between the two sides and there’s a huge suspense as to what’s going to happen.”