The Republican National Convention disaster
Generally whenever there’s a national political convention at the end of summer in a presidential election year, the nominee for that party experiences a polling bump. They get formally nominated and a coalition of speakers talks about how important they are and touts the platform.
It’s also when people who don’t really follow politics at all start to pay attention and tune in to watch. Of course, the Republican National Convention has gotten more and more gratuitously vile, particularly over the last decade, when the anti-Obama movement betrayed itself as flat out racist to the clown show that came along with Donald Trump’s nomination.
It should therefore surprise no one to learn that the first night of the 2024 RNC, despite all of CNN’s fawning over Donald Trump, crashed in the ratings – down 21% from where they were in 2016, back when Trump was a ratings friendly grab and networks provided him with billions of dollars worth of free coverage that a campaign could never afford.
Despite the media’s insistence that Trump is stronger than ever, the footage of him sleeping throughout the convention, and the numbers themselves actually tell a different story. The RNC’s first night drew in about 18.1 million viewers, around six million less than tuned in for President Biden’s home run press conference last week. Not only is Donald Trump unpopular, so is his party and their disastrous policies. This is why we need to re-elect President Biden and Democrats down the ballot on Nov 5.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making