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The Democratic National Convention drew in more than 20 million viewers for the third night in a row on Wednesday, far surpassing the number of Americans who tuned in for the third night of the Republican National Convention earlier this month.
According to ratings released by Nielsen, nearly 20.2 million viewers tuned in on Wednesday night to watch Oprah Winfrey and former president Bill Clinton deliver keynote speeches and to see vice presidential candidate Tim Walz accept the Democratic nomination in Chicago.
Measurements were taken from 12 TV networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, Scripps News, CNN, CNNe, FOX Business, FOX News Channel, MSNBC, Newsmax, NewsNation and PBS.
The third night of the RNC, by comparison, drew three million fewer with 18 million viewers tuning in in July when JD Vance gave his first major speech as the Republican vice presidential nominee in Milwaukee.
Viewing figures for the final night of the DNC – where Kamala Harris gave her historic acceptance speech to take on Donald Trump in November – have not been released yet. But, in order to beat Trump’s keynote – his first major address since he survived an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania – she will need to exceed a peak of 28.4 million viewers.
The final night of the RNC was the most successful for the Republican convention, with an average of 25.3 million Americans tuning in to the broadcast.
The RNC reached 18.1 million, 14.8 million and 18 million viewers, on its first three days, respectively, Nielsen’s figures showed.
So far, the DNC peaked on its second night, with an average of 20.6 million viewers on Tuesday, up from 20 million on Monday when President Joe Biden gave his address, according to Nielsen.
Tuesday’s convention featured speeches from Barack and Michelle Obama. During the former president’s address, viewership jumped above the night’s average, to reach 21.6 million, according to Nielsen.
Reports earlier this week suggested Trump was concerned Harris’s speech closing out the convention would outshine his RNC send-off.
On Thursday night, the former president sought to draw attention away from Harris’s speech by running a live commentary on his Truth Social platform. During the 38-minute speech, he unleashed a stream of inflammatory falsehoods across 59 posts – more than one per minute – repeatedly referring to his rival as “Comrade Kamala Harris” and as a “Marxist.”
Analyst Michael Mulvihill, president of insights and analytics at FOX Sports, FOX Entertainment, and Tubi, commented on the significance of the ratings battle in presidential campaigns.
“Take it as you will, in the last three Presidential cycles the candidate with the larger TV audience for their nomination acceptance speech has gone on to win the Presidency,” he wrote on X.
Mulvihill also suggested that the DNC viewing figures have been larger due to the run-time of the shows. “Largely because the DNC shows have simply been longer than the RNC, the DNC has built a sizable lead in total time viewed over the first three nights,” he said.
“From 9pm ET on, the DNC has totaled 10.1 billion minutes viewed across all networks, +52% more than same nights of the RNC (6.6b).”
