GOP Convention Lowest In Viewers Of Last 8 Conventions

The chart above is from Axios.com. It shows the Nielsen figures for the viewership of the last four Democratic and Republican convention.

The number of viewers who watched both conventions this year is significantly lower than in previous years. The Democratic convention had 5.2 million fewer viewers than in 2016. The Republican convention had 8.4 million fewer viewers than in 2016.

On the most important night, the last day when the presidential nominees give their acceptance speech, about 800,000 more people watched Biden's speech than watched Trump's speech.

Last Democratic Debate Had The Largest Audience

(This photo of the Las Vegas Democratic debate is from NBCnews.com.)

Since the June debate of Democratic candidates, the audience for those debates had been shrinking. That changed last Wednesday night with the debate in Las Vegas. Is it because many voters still haven't made up their minds, and the Nevada, South Carolina, and Super Tuesday primaries are coming up fast (with many Super Tuesday states already doing some early voting)? Maybe.

Whatever the reason, the debate in Las Vegas had the highest viewership of any of the Democratic debates this season (and maybe for any Democratic debate ever).

Here is how The Hollywood Reporter reported it:

The ninth debate of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary — and the first featuring former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg — delivered record viewership for a Democratic debate.

Nearly 20 million people watched the debate on NBC and MSNBC on Wednesday night. The 19.66 million viewers for the two-hour telecast breaks the previous Democratic primary record of 18.1 million by a sizable margin. The previous mark was set in June 2019 for night two of the first Democratic debate, carried by NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo. 

The debate also averaged 417,000 streaming viewers, bringing the total average audience just above 20 million. 

The broadcast also brought in 5.31 million viewers in the key news demographic of adults 25-54 — just ahead of the 5.3 million for the June debate — and 4.26 million in the 18-49 demo across the two networks. NBC had slightly more than 12 million viewers, while MSNBC's audience of 7.61 million was its third-largest ever behind a 2010 Olympic hockey game (8.2 million) and a 2008 Democratic primary debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (7.7 million).

The record audience for a primary debate for either major party remains 24 million viewers on Fox News for the first Republican debate of the 2016 cycle.

Donald Trump Is Still Finishing Second To Barack Obama

It just kills the narcissist in the White House that he cannot come up to the numbers (or popularity) of President Obama. Although he denies it, Trump had a much smaller crowd attending his inauguration than Obama did -- and that extended to the TV audience watching those inaugurations.

Now we have the numbers for Trump's first speech to a joint session of Congress -- and once again he finished behind President Obama. Trump had a 27.8 overnight share of the TV audience, while Obama had a 33.4 share. That translates into 48 million viewers for Trump and 52.4 million for Obama.

It's just one more hit to Trump's massive ego.

Trump's Inauguration Watched On TV By Over 7 Million Less Than Viewed Obama's First Inauguration

Trump got his feelings hurt by the media reporting the truth about attendance at his inauguration -- than far fewer attended it than attended Barack Obama's first inauguration. He lashed out at the media and lied about attendance (giving "alternate facts"). That's no surprise. It's exactly what we should expect from a narcissist.

Now it turns out that attendance was not only much lower, but the TV viewership was also significantly lower than that of Barack Obama -- about 7.2 million viewers lower (according to initial Nielsen ratings). Obama's first inauguration had 37.8 million viewers, while Trump's had only 30.6 million.

Trump also had fewer viewers than Jimmy Carter (34.1 million) and Ronald Reagan (41.8 million) -- both of which presided over a smaller general population.

I expect we can see another tantrum coming from Trump over this -- and a lot of tweets filled with "alternate facts" (lies).

Presidential Debate Viewership Sets A New Record

I wrote a post a few days ago in which I shared a poll saying the probable debate viewership would be between 64.3 and 106 7 million. I expressed my doubts that there would be that many viewers (even the lower figure of 64.3 million). I wasn't just wrong -- I was spectacularly wrong!

The initial Nielsen rating numbers show that over the 13 networks they count, there were about 84 million viewers -- more than ever before for a presidential debate (the old record being 80.6 million in 1980). And that number doesn't include C-SPAN, online viewers (YouTube had around 2.5 million by itself), or those who watched in groups at parties, bars, restaurants, or work.

The chart above shows the viewers (in millions) on the major broadcast and cable networks.

Nielsen also reported that there was very little drop-off as the debate progressed. Almost all of the viewers that tuned in watched the entire debate. It seems that in spite of what the media has been telling us (that most voters are turned off by the choice being Clinton or Trump), there is a huge interest in this election. I hope that translates into a huge turnout on election day in November.