Harris’s Convention Speech Ratings Surge 22% Higher Than His

Preliminary ratings from the recent Democratic National Convention indicate that Kamala Harris’s keynote speech attracted 22% more viewers than Donald Trump’s address at last month’s Republican National Convention.

Making history, Harris became the first woman of color to accept a major party’s presidential nomination during her speech delivered in Chicago, Illinois. Her address, lasting 45 minutes, drew in around 15 million viewers, according to ratings compiled by seven major networks, as reported by Michael Mulvihill, president of insights and analytics at Fox Corporation. Notably, MSNBC averaged 6.8 million viewers alone for the vice president’s speech.

In contrast, Trump’s keynote speech, which lasted 90 minutes, garnered 12.3 million viewers, according to the same set of network ratings. The viewer disparity marks a significant difference in interest toward the two speeches.

Harris’s ratings also surpassed Trump’s in key locations such as Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Detroit, all crucial swing cities. However, Trump performed better than Harris in Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, and Greensboro, as noted by Mulvihill.

The final night of the Democratic National Convention saw an audience of 14.3 million viewers across the seven networks, again exceeding the Republican National Convention’s final night, which averaged 12.2 million viewers.

According to Mulvihill, “All week the DNC has had big leads in the overnights, and the margins have narrowed in the final nationals. The 17% gap for last night’s full show is close enough that you can’t rule out the possibility of the RNC having the bigger national audience.”

Reportedly, Trump expressed concern about Harris’s speech potentially drawing a larger audience than his own in the lead-up to her address, with two sources close to his campaign sharing insights with Rolling Stone. They indicated that Trump frequently mentioned his own “tremendous” viewership in conversations.

In response to these reports, the Trump campaign remarked that “voters know Kamala is weak, failed, and dangerously liberal, and the Democrat ticket is the most radical in American history.”

During her landmark keynote, Harris outlined her vision to “write the next great chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told” and raised alarms about the implications of a second Trump presidency.

“In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man. But the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious,” she asserted.

Harris elaborated, “Imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails, and how he would use the immense powers of the presidency … not to improve your life, not to strengthen our national security, but to serve the only client he has ever had: himself.”