The Democratic meet-up in Philadelphia outpaced the GOP showing during the first three nights of the convention.
Two solid-ish weeks of political conventions culminated in Thursday's final outing for the Democrats. Hillary Clinton capped off the fourth night of the DNC with a history-making acceptance of her party's nomination during an address to the Philadelphia crowd — and a yet-to-be-determined number of TV viewers.
After a solid, if not spectacular, showing from the Republicans just a week ago, the DNC upped the ratings game by a decent margin over the first three days of its convention. It simultaneously outpaced its 2012 showing, albeit not by that much. Early returns for Clinton's speech, delivered during the 10 o'clock hour on handful of television networks, offer a tentative 11.5 million viewers from the three broadcast networks with coverage. With the last three days as a blue print, that number will more than double with final tallies. This has been, after all, a cable news convention cycle. CNN has handily topped DNC overage, while Fox News Channel outpaced the pack in RNC ratings.
NBC News leads early numbers 3.7 million viewers. Barring any change in ranking, that will make the eighth and final night of convention coverage in which the network topped its broadcast competition. ABC News follows with 3.3 million, with CBS pacing third with 3.2 million. An additional 1.5 million viewers came from Spanish-language net Univision. Those early numbers are on par with what the RNC offered up for Fast Affiliate ratings during its final night.
More ratings to come...
2016 Convention Audiences
DNC
Day 1 — 28.4 million
Day 2 — 28 million
Day 3 — 27 million
Day 4 — TBD
RNC
Day 1 — 23 million
Day 2 — 23 million
Day 3 — 19.8 million
Day 4 — 32 million