If the election were based on convention viewers, Donald J. Trump would now be president!

Trumps’ convention speech was watched by over 2 million more viewers than Hillary’s. Trump had 32.2 million viewers to Hillary’s 29.8 million.

This Nielsen report included ten channels: CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, Univision, CNBC, Fox Business, and NBC Universo. Even with PBS coverage added in Trump still beat Hillary with 34.9 million viewers to her 33.8 million.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNEIQ8olnro

I’m not sure any of these numbers really mean anything for the campaigns. People could simply be tuning in to see if a train wreck happens. It certainly does not indicate support of the candidate, and probably the same Trump viewers were in the same count for Hillary viewers too (like us here). But the higher numbers for Trump could indicate that more people are interested in seeing something new, and they did not have the same necessity to check out Clinton – we all pretty much know what we are getting there. Hillary’s speech, for even the moderately well informed told us nothing we didn’t already know so why suffer through that snooze fest unless you’re a glutton for punishment (again, like us here).

Despite Trump’s speech bringing in more viewers, the RNC lost overall to the DNC in total viewers. But Donald Trump didn’t lay low this past week during the DNC. He was able to steal news coverage away from the DNC by making headlines talking about Russians hacking into Hillary’s email, in order to provide the information that she so stealthily separated and allegedly destroyed. In return, he was attacked for the “treasonous” remarks of encouraging foreign powers to interfere in America’s election process. Those criticizing him for this continue to try to make mountains out of molehills, maybe because he has demonstrated an amazing ability to turn lemons into lemonade. If Trump can continue to get more people to tune in to listen to him over Hillary, he will be well on his way to increasing his poll numbers and give Hillary a solid run.