The television ratings of the first night of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) sunk 22 percent from 2016, according to Nielsen.
The ratings crash suggests that Vice President Kamala Harris is far less popular than the media purported.
About 20 million people watched the first night of the DNC, up from 2020’s virtual convention but severely down from 2016, Axios reported:
- Around 19.1 million viewers watched the DNC live from 11:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. ET during the president’s speech.
- MSNBC drew the most viewers across all networks with 4.6 million, followed by CNN (3.2 million), ABC (2.8 million), Fox News (2.4 million), CBS (2.0 million) and NBC (1.8 million), according to fast national data provided by MSNBC.
- Monday marked the network’s largest DNC night 1 viewership ever, a spokesperson said.
The ratings crash came after the media spent countless hours hyping Harris’s “historic” candidacy.
Television networks gave Harris 84 percent “positive coverage” since she joined the presidential race, a Media Research Center study found Monday, and they produced 89 percent negative coverage of former President Donald Trump.
Day two of the convention did not appear to go any better than the first. The media published what seems to be an unusual amount of negative stories about the second day.
Headlines from several outlets slammed the DNC’s schedule, talking points, angle of political attacks, and the unrest outside the convention center.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.