Trump and Ronna McDaniel Tweet About Digital Views for RNC After DNC Handily Wins Convention TV Ratings Race
Democrats and members of the press have been essentially taunting Republicans and President Donald Trump over Joe Biden and Democrats trouncing the RNC in convention TV ratings over the last few days. Now Trump is calling the ratings “fake news” in tweets about digital viewers.
The TV ratings were higher for Democrats when comparing the conventions overall, and specifically comparing Biden’s acceptance speech with Trump’s.
According to data from Nielsen, the president’s address drew a total audience of 19.85 million across the six major networks (three cable and three broadcast) which carried the speech. For comparison, Biden, last Thursday, drew 21.81 million viewers for his address at the Democratic convention.
That led to crowing, triumphal media tweets and headlines, such as this from the Daily Beast.
On Friday night, however, GOP Chair Ronna McDaniel tweeted about the digital ratings, which she said were higher for Trump and the Republicans than for the older Biden and the Democrats.
147.9M views across TV/digital – 25M more than Biden/DNC.
$76M raised for RNC & @TeamTrump – $6M more than Biden/DNC.#RNC2020 told voters real stories from real Americans who benefited from @realDonaldTrump’s policies – and it clearly resonated! https://t.co/1TlI6MXPBr
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) August 29, 2020
McDaniel referenced a Fox News report, which in addition to digital views covered fundraising numbers from during the convention. In both cases, the article references numbers provided by the RNC.
Meanwhile, the Republican National Convention brought in 147.9 million total views across television and online between Monday and the end of Thursday night’s programming, according to a senior campaign official.
Although cable and network news carried much of the Republican convention, it was under slightly different conditions, a set-up which CNN’s Brian Stelter described as a “disparity” that was necessary. For example, CNN’s coverage included both streaming fact-checks, and interrupting for live fact-checks and gainsaying of what was being broadcast.
President Trump retweeted the ratings with commentary, saying that the “Fake News doesn’t want to report these numbers.”
The Fake News doesn’t want to report these numbers. The @latimes and others believed the Crooked Dems before the real numbers came out. Too bad we don’t have honest reporting when it comes to “Trump”. Phony sources, they say anything and think they get away with it. November 3rd. https://t.co/gyHx898DXn
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2020
Fox News itself had massive ratings during the convention, including setting the record for most viewers of the first night of a political convention in cable news history. In fact, Fox News beat all the broadcast and cable news competitors combined for the overall ratings, reinforcing the idea that people interested in hearing what the Republicans had to say stayed away from press outlets committed to deliberately truncating or interfering with that message.
C-SPAN likewise showed significantly higher ratings for the opening night of the RNC versus the DNC.
Nielsen does not track digital viewers, and Fox News did not include in their article their own tally of viewers across digital platforms, nor any standardized tally of total viewers (like Nielsen) across multiple digital platforms from other outlets.
