About 21.6 million viewers watched coverage of Trump's RNC address across nine cable and broadcast networks, down from 23.6 million viewers who watched Biden's DNC address on the same nine networks.
The totals may fluctuate slightly when final numbers are released later in the day, but Biden clearly edged out Trump.
The Democratic convention was also higher-rated than the Republican convention overall when the audience for all four days is tallied up.
The president's ratings obsession is well-documented. He has tweeted about ratings hundreds of times, often inaccurately. He raised the subject as recently as Friday morning, when he
tweeted, "Great Ratings & Reviews Last Night. Thank you!"
He did not share any immediate reaction when the initial viewership figures showed him trailing Biden.
Nielsen's data sets count traditional TV viewership across America but largely leave out streaming and other digital forms of engagement, so the picture is incomplete.
And it is impossible to know how many people watched just Trump, just Biden, or both speeches.
So the ratings are not a proxy for voter behavior -- but they are notable for other reasons.
Average viewership for both 2020 conventions
dropped from 2016, when Trump accepted the GOP nomination and Hillary Clinton ran against him.
That year, Clinton's speech averaged 29.8 million viewers and
Trump's speech averaged 32.2 million viewers. (The 2016 totals cannot be compared exactly to the overnight ratings for this year, but they are directionally accurate.)
Biden's campaign relished the ratings victory on Friday: TJ Ducklo, national press secretary for the Biden campaign,
tweeted to Biden rapid response director Andrew Bates and asked, tongue very firmly in cheek, "I always forget, does @realDonaldTrump care about his television ratings? Or is that not something he cares about? Like, do you think it'll trigger him that @JoeBiden's speech got way bigger ratings than his did?"
Bates
replied even more sarcastically: "You mean the self-described 'Ratings Machine DJT,' who bet the farm on this & broke the law to exploit the White House as a prop *while* pretending he isn't in charge as the pandemic spins out of control and violence & division flare up? Nah, I think he'll be totally sanguine."
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