by Mark Silva
John McCain outdrew Barack Obama in the television viewing audiences watching their presidential nomination acceptance speeches.
McCain drew 38.9 million viewers for his speech last night in St. Paul, according to Nielsen. That was a half-million more viewers than Obama drew for his speech in Denver.
Fortunately for McCain, he also outdrew his own running mate, who had drawn an extraordinary audience in her own right with her convention speech this week, 37 million.
McCain drew more men than Obama did. The senior senator from Arizona drew an audience of 17.9 million men, Nielsen reports today, and 19.2 million women.
Obama drew a larger female audience for his speech -- 19.9 million women and 16.2 million men.
More white viewers were watching McCain than Obama, too: 32.2 million for McCain and 27 million for Obama. More black viewers watched Obama -- 7.5 million to 3.1 million,.
What everyone thought about the two speeches, however, is beyond Nielsen's "pay grade.''
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Comments
The Nielsen ratings do not include CSPAN, people that watched the speeches through the Internet, or people that watched at another home or a bar.
Posted by: Stan | September 5, 2008 6:08 PM
This can only means that after months of forced-fed Obama coverage by the media, the American public finally had a chance to choose whom they want listen to and whose positions and policies they want to know. In this case, it's Senator McCain who gets more interest from voters. This sounds like very bad news for the Obama camp.
Posted by: Ryan | September 6, 2008 12:19 AM
Forget about the Wars, the economy,high gas prices, global warming etc. the last four years. This time we really mean it when we say we will change, Really, we do! Don't vote for that scary Obama man. He says change but he lies! This time we won't make the same mistakes. We promise! Vote Republican just one more time and everything will get better.
Posted by: Tammy | September 6, 2008 5:48 AM
The Nielsons are an inadequate tool for measuring viewership in an age where millions watch television via the internet. Like many news media narratives about this race (( remember how Rudy Guiliani was the presumed GOP nominee and Fred Thompson was his biggest threat? The inevitability of Hillary? )), it is completely clueless to how the growing number of digital immigrants and natives are consuming and sharing information.
Posted by: David | September 6, 2008 6:38 AM
It's also funny that they don't have information like who (party affiliation) watched the conventions. I know a lot of republicans (most of my family) that didn't even bother to see what Obama or Biden had to say on the issues, but I know tons of democrats who did tune in to the GOP convention to see if the republicans even touched on the issues (which sadly they did not).
It goes to show who is the more open minded of the two.
Posted by: John | September 9, 2008 7:01 PM