Joe Biden's DNC 2020 speech was highest-rated at convention but was 21% less than Hillary Clinton's in 2016
On Thursday, August 20, former Vice President Joe Biden, in his third campaign for president -- first in 1988 and then in 2008 -- formally accepted the Democratic Party's nomination for president in a speech, 33 years after he made his first bid for the White House.
Biden assumed center stage at the Chase Center in Delaware, saying, “While I will be a Democratic candidate, I will be an American president. I will work as hard for those who didn’t support me as I will for those who did. That’s the job of a president. To represent all of us, not just our base or our party. This is not a partisan moment. This must be an American moment.”
Biden, during his 24-minute speech at the convention, touched on topics like Charlottesville, George Floyd, the economic collapse, and the coronavirus pandemic. “America's ready,” Biden said. “We can find the light once more.” Biden also took aim at President Donald Trump, saying that he had brought “too much anger, too much fear, too much division” to the White House and vowed to serve as “an ally of light” if elected. He also said that Trump has “cloaked America in darkness” and urged voters to make a change.
According to a report in The Hill, Biden's speech was the highest-rated event of the week for the Democratic National Convention. However, it drew a smaller audience than Hillary Clinton's speech at the DNC in 2016, according to estimates from Nielsen Media Research.
Per the report in The Hill, Biden's speech was watched by 21.8 million people on TV, across ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC, beating early numbers for other major speeches at the convention earlier in the week. The report said that Wednesday’s Kamala Harris acceptance speech to be Biden's running mate and former President Obama speech in support of his former vice president was viewed less than Biden’s.
The figures, for both Biden and Harris, are only expected to grow with additional networks being added. These figures do not include the online streaming of the speech. According to The Hollywood Reporter, additional coverage on PBS, Fox Business, CNNe, and Newsy will likely add about five percent to the total.
Yet, these early numbers reportedly mark a 21 percent drop from Clinton's speech at the DNC in 2016, when she accepted the Democratic nomination that year. It is also more than 38 percent lower than President Trump's acceptance speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention, which drew 34.9 million viewers.
The DNC, on Wednesday, garnered 21.7 million viewers. This was 12 percent less than what it garnered in 2016, according to Nielsen. Tuesday’s broadcast had 6.13 million viewers on ABC, CBS and NBC, with figures plummeting 48 percent drop from the second night of the 2016 convention.
Reportedly, across all four nights, the convention averaged 20.12 million viewers on the six aforementioned networks. That's down by 21 percent as compared to the 2016 convention's average of 25.51 million viewers on the same six outlets.