As Democrats made the case for their presidential nominee this week, an average of 21.8 million viewers tuned in over four days to watch the events in Chicago, according to Nielsen data.
Viewership numbers for the Democratic National Convention eclipsed the Republican National Convention’s 19.1 million average viewers in July. And, per Nielsen, the final night of the DNC, which featured Harris’ acceptance speech, drew 26.2 million viewers, slightly higher than the 25.3 million people who watched the last night of the Republican convention.
Part of that may be due to the length of the nominees’ speeches: Harris’ clocked in at a relatively brief 38 minutes, while Trump’s went on for 92 minutes — the longest nomination acceptance speech on record.
Curiosity and anticipation for Harris, whose candidacy has garnered a ton of enthusiasm among Democrats, may also explain the interest in the DNC. But other factors might have boosted viewership: The party rolled out A-list celebrity speakers like Oprah Winfrey and musical acts like Lil Jon and Pink, and there was intense speculation (that eventually proved unfounded) that Beyoncé would make an appearance on the final night of the convention to endorse Harris.
Convention ratings are far from an accurate indicator of who will win an election. But those data points might vex the GOP nominee, who has long taken pride in his ability to draw a crowd. Trump’s fixation on TV ratings and crowd size are well documented, and his frustration with the large audiences that Harris has drawn at her campaign events in recent weeks has been obvious. He has falsely claimed that Harris used artificial intelligence to change a photo to inflate the number of attendees at her rally in Detroit — a claim he appeared to walk back days later. When asked how concerned he was about the audience at Harris’ rallies, Trump accused the media of being “dishonest” about his crowd sizes. He also suggested that more people turned out for his speech on Jan. 6, 2021 — which preceded the Capitol riots — than for Martin Luther King Jr.’s address during the March on Washington in 1963.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
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