Harris’ TV audience outranks Trump’s speech, DNC grabs more viewers overall

Ratings for coverage of the 2024 Democratic National Convention outperformed the Republican’s similar event held earlier in the summer.

The highest-rated moment of the DNC was when Vice President and party nominee Kamala Harris spoke from 10:31 to 11:11 p.m. eastern Aug. 23, 2024. This recorded 28.9 million viewers.

Donald Trump’s speech at the RNC hit 28.4 million viewers, just slightly below Harris’ numbers.

However, the DNC significantly outperformed the RNC in terms of average viewership over all nights. An average of 19.1 million people watched RNC coverage, while 21.8 million watched the DNC.

Data also showed that viewership was heavily partisan.

Fox’s conservative commentary channel outranked all other cable networks for the RNC. It frequently wins the top position against other cable news channels or all of cable.

Left-leaning MSNBC, however, took top viewership across all of cable during the DNC. 

MSNBC also scored a victory in beating its own record for most-watched convention coverage in its history.

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Overall, viewership was down from 2016, the last time the convention was held in person. the DNC scored just under 30 million viewers that year, with the RNC coming in at around 30.5 million.

2016 was the first year Donald Trump ran for president. Hillary Clinton was his democratic opponent.

The 2020 conventions were held in a virtual format due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Major networks still carried the live stream but, as with most COVID-era telecasts of recurring events, numbers were down from a high of just under 25 million for the DNC and 28 million for the RNC.