In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well underway.
President Trump's Thursday night convention speech making the case for his reelection was lower-rated than his challenger Joe Biden's speech one week ago, according to overnight Nielsen ratings.
About 23.8 million viewers watched coverage of Trump's RNC address across thirteen cable and broadcast networks, down from 24.6 million viewers who watched Biden's DNC address on twelve of those same networks.
The gap between Biden and Trump was wider earlier in the day, when fewer networks were counted in the total. Nielsen released its final audience estimate late on Friday afternoon, bringing Trump within a million viewers. Still, Biden clearly edged out Trump.
The Democratic convention was also higher-rated than the Republican convention overall when the audience for all four days is tallied up.Kendall Karson at ABC:
President Donald Trump's efforts to build his appeal and define his opponent at the Republican National Convention, using pageantry and the White House as the backdrop, had little apparent impact on the electorate's impressions of both him and former Vice President Joe Biden, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds.
Trump's week of celebration did not improve his favorability, even among his own base, and the country still remains widely critical of his handling of the major crisis of his presidency: COVID-19.
Less than one-third (31%) of the country has a favorable view of the president in the days after he accepted the Republican nomination for the second time -- a stagnant reality for Trump. His favorability rating stood at 32% in the last poll, taken a week earlier, right after the Democratic National Convention.
Trump finds himself in a much different position than his chief rival.
In the new survey, which was conducted using Ipsos' KnowledgePanel, Biden's favorability remains higher than his unfavorability, 46% to 40%, solidifying his improvement in favorability from last week, when attitudes about the Democratic nominee improved to a net positive from his slightly underwater position prior to the convention.
Biden's favorability ticked up from 40% in an Aug. 13 poll to 45% just after the Democratic convention.
