The viewership for the first night of the Democratic National Convention was down from its audience for the last in-person convention that the party had in 2016.
On Monday night, Democrats gathered in Chicago for their first in-person convention since 2016, and the evening drew an audience of roughly 20 million, Axios reported. Those numbers are down 22% from the 26 million people that watched the convention in 2016 when former Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was officially nominated by her party to go against Donald Trump.
The biggest speaker of the night was billed to be President Joe Biden, but his farewell address to the delegates didn’t happen until very late on the East Coast after earlier speeches went longer than the convention officials expected.
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20M watch first night of DNC, down 22% from 2016 https://t.co/xIEwrwhItP
— Axios (@axios) August 21, 2024
Around 19.1 million viewers watched the DNC live between 11:30 pm and 12:30 am EST during Biden’s speech and final convention as a Democratic Party leader.
The event was carried across 13 broadcast and cable networks, including CNN, FOX Business, FOX News Channel, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, Scripps News, Univision, Newsmax, NewsNation, and PBS, the outlet noted.
According to Nielsen data, the vast majority (76%) of voters who watched the DNC live on its first night were over the age of 55, the outlet noted. Those numbers match up with the same age demographic of the audience who tuned in live every night to watch the Republican National Convention, Axios noted.
The drop in viewership is in line with what’s happened with other live political events. The TV ratings for President Biden and former President Donald Trump’s first presidential debate in June plummeted from where they were four years ago.
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Numbers from Nielsen show that a total of 51.27 million people tuned in to CNN to watch what would end up being the only 2024 presidential debate between Biden and Trump, which was broadcast over 17 networks, including CNN, Telemundo, Univision, BET, as well as Fox News Channel, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, and PBS, Variety reported.
In comparison, when the two men faced off in September 2020, 73 million plus tuned in.
