this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2024
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The Democratic National Convention again surpassed its Republican counterpart in viewership numbers Tuesday night, with an average of more than 20 million Americans tuning in compared to the RNC’s 14 million on its second night—a nearly 39% difference.

The event even garnered roughly 500,000 more viewers than its first night—a historical anomaly, according to Nielsen data.

Typically, fewer viewers tune in to the conventions on the second night.

The 2024 convention is the first Democratic conference to have higher ratings on the second night in the last decade—most likely propelled by the primetime speeches given by former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama.

top 24 comments
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[–] [email protected] 52 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I mean. It's going to every night, and I'd be real surprised if the RNC ever had more viewers....

Democrats are the majority of voters, Republicans live in the areas with the majority of empty land.

Unfortunately we dont live in a straight democracy

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago

If only we could make Republicans think that means we live in a gay democracy, because it's not straight...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

I think Republicans are also generally disengaged. That's what enables them to vote for so much monstrous garbage; they don't pay enough attention to know what they're voting for. There are also plenty of true believers who really are christian nationalists, but for most people, if they follow the policy positions, they'd be Democrats.

So when it comes to the number of people watching a convention, the DNC sorta naturally attracts more people since the base is paying more attention.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

Independents are a majority of voters, nearly double those that identify as Democrat

[–] [email protected] 45 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Hooray but it means NOTHING.

Get the fuck out and vote. Get your lazy ass friends and family to the polls ffs.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago

The two good things about high ratings are:

  1. It shows engagement is high
  2. It's the kind of metric that Trump cares deeply about

But yes, polls, ratings, news articles, and all those things didn't matter, just election votes matter.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Legit my first thought was "why are we celebrating TV RATINGS like they somehow equate to voting?"

You can have 50,000,000 people watch the same TV show but not buy any merchandise. A lot won't even have the ability to purchase something from the show.

And I sure plenty of people watching last night won't be able to vote for one reason or another.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Legit my first thought was "why are we celebrating TV RATINGS like they somehow equate to voting?"

It's Horse Race season. Barring anything really exciting like "her emails" all they have is polls. We'll see hundreds of "Polls say this" and "Polls say that" headlines in the next 11 weeks.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I mean, the "front page" of lemmy is basically "POLLS? POLLS!" already but I'm positive it'll get 10x worse.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

What? They equate more to a poll. Why would anyone equate it to voting? Wtf?

[–] [email protected] 43 points 3 months ago (1 children)

pretty sure obama could stand up and talk about foot fungus for 2 hours and get higher ratings than anyone in the GOP

[–] poke 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Let me be clear, shower shoes.

[–] gravitas_deficiency 18 points 3 months ago

The only reason I care about this metric is because I know Trump is probably losing his mind over it <3

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I remember how the qons kept talking about Biden was going to lose because "crowd sizes" or "enthusiasm" and that if he actually won, that was proof the election was stolen in 2020 because he was "campaigning from his basement".

Where are all those people now, I wonder?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago

Still in St. Petersburg where they always were, hoping Vova doesn't send them to a border checkpoint.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Ask Herman Kane. He loved those big crowds.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Being used as cannon fodder in Russia.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago

I watched the video of Obama's speech on yt last night. Great speech, but what struck me most was how many obvious bot accounts were trying to spread negative messaging about Democrats in the comments.

Now yt comment sections aren't exactly known for being a great place to discuss things but I've never seen that amount of blatant astroturfing all in one place. I scrolled through over a hundred of the top comments and 80% were from accounts with the "firstname-lastname-4digit#" type of username and little or no account activity aside from comments. This was 3 hours after the video was originally posted.

We really need to address bot activity on the internet because people are way too easily swayed by stuff like that. We're making it almost trivial for bad actors to control the narrative in ways that are not good for society.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Pretty sure all these stupid posts are just the media punishing the weak and weird mind of some egotistical psychopath who would care about "ratings" , "crowd size" and "popularity". Any idea who?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

it's probably even more since the majority of the audience probably watched the kamalaharris or demconvention live streams.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 months ago

Glad the DNC has.