2024 Democratic Convention Outdraws Republicans on TV

The closing of the Democratic National Convention drew a big audience Thursday — topping both the final night of the party’s gathering four years ago and that of the Republican convention in July.

Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the party’s nomination to top the Democratic ticket and oppose Republican nominee Donald Trump. Coverage of the Democrats’ closing night averaged 26.2 million viewers across 15 broadcast and cable networks, according to Nielsen figures. That’s about 820,000 more people than the 25.38 million who watched the final night of the Republican National Convention.

Thursday’s total is up substantially over the first three days of the Democratic convention, which averaged 20.33 million viewers and were very consistent night to night: Monday averaged 20.03 million viewers, Tuesday brought in 20.78 million and Wednesday drew 20.18 million across broadcast and cable networks. Adding in Thursday’s total, the convention as a whole averaged 21.8 million viewers in primetime, a slight improvement the 2020 convention’s four-night average of 21.59 million viewers.

The DNC’s four-day average also topped the July Republican convention in TV viewers by a 14 percent margin; the RNC averaged 19.07 million viewers over four nights.

As it did throughout the week, MSNBC drew the biggest audience for any single network on Thursday. It averaged 6.53 million viewers from 9-11:30 p.m. ET Wednesday, well ahead of second-place ABC (4.23 million). CNN came in third with 3.94 million viewers, followed by NBC at 3.01 million. Fox News (2.45 million) narrowly beat CBS (2.42 million).

Those six networks made up about 86 percent of the total TV audience on Thursday; the remaining 3.62 million viewers were spread across PBS, Scripps News, Telemundo, Univision, BET, CNNe, Fox Business, Newsmax and NewsNation.

MSNBC also led all comers Thursday in the core news demographic of adults 25-54 with 1.28 million such viewers. CNN (1.13 million) grabbed second in the demo, and ABC was third with 1.05 million adults 25-54. NBC had 857,000 viewers in the demo, followed by CBS at 607,000 and Fox News at 358,000.

Thursday’s combined viewership peaked during Harris’ acceptance speech, as she became the second woman and first woman of color to clinch a major-party presidential nomination. Her speech averaged about 28.9 million viewers, according to Nielsen. All figures cited in this story are for TV viewing and don’t include streaming.

Aug. 23, 2:48 p.m. An earlier version of this story misstated the all-network audience for the Democratic convention on Thursday.