The momentum of Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign helped push the ratings for the Democratic National Convention past the Republican festivities for former President Trump. Nielsen data showed that Harris’ well-received acceptance speech was watched by 29 million viewers across 15 networks. The figure is 14% higher than for Trump’s speech, which scored 25.
4 million viewers July 19. Harris also drew substantially more than the 24.6 million viewers who watched Joe Biden’s acceptance speech at the convention in 2020 and about the same as the 29.
8 million viewers who tuned in to Hillary Clinton in 2016. Harris helped herself by keeping her speech to 37 minutes. Trump’s 90-minute-plus stem-winder went on well past midnight on the East Coast.
The speech caps a successful week for the Democratic National Convention, which topped the audience for the GOP’s gathering every night this week. Harris being thrust to the top of the ticket after President Biden decided to end his reelection campaign on July 21 — one of the wildest political twists in U.S.
history — has energized Democratic voters who were unhappy to have a rematch of the 2020 campaign. Harris used the speech to reintroduce herself to the public, going heavy on biographical details and her work as a prosecutor in California. Harris may have also gotten a boost from false rumors that music superstars Beyoncé and Taylor Swift were coming to the United Center in Chicago to perform at the even.