For the past two Fridays, we looked at the preliminary results of both the RNC and the DNC. Today, we want to look at the final results of these conventions to see who ultimately won the votes of online video audiences. The data is through the Monday morning after the convention, allowing audiences enough time to catch up on watching the speeches online. While people are still watching the convention speeches online, the data has stabalized at this point.
Overall Results
If we take a look at the Top 10 speakers from both conventions, the winner, in view counts at least, is clear. The DNC produced well over 13 million views from their Top 10 speakers. The RNC, by contrast, scored 7.3 million views. The DNC inspired more clips than the RNC as well, despite the influx of video clips for Clint Eastwood's speech. At the end of the day, the DNC had over 340 clips for its Top 10 convention speeches while the RNC only had 240.
The Most-Watched Speakers
Watching the most-watched speaker race has been fascinating. At first, it seems liked no one could top Eastwood's empty chair speech. And then, Michelle Obama had the upper hand last week among the democrats with over 2.5 million views. Yet, neither of them are responsible for the most-watched speech of the convention.
Bill Clinton has pulled away over the weekend, generating over 5 million views as of Monday morning. Eastwood is 300,000 views behind Clinton with over 4.7 million views. Michelle Obama follows with 4.1 million views.
The Candidates
Neither of the candidates were able to garner enough views to be the most-watched of the convention. President Obama comes in third place among DNC speakers with 2 million views. Romney, on the other hand, struggled to produce views, coming in fifth place among RNC speakers with 287,000 views. In this contest, Obama topped Romney by over 700%.
The Candidates' Wives
The candidates' wives are a crucial part of any political campaign. During presidential campaigns, the convention speeches are seen as a pinnacle moment for them. Ann Romney came in third place among all republican speakers, driving nearly 550,000 views, over twice the amount of views that her husband produced. As noted above, Michelle Obama is responsible for over 4.1 million views, 750% more than Ann Romney.
The VPs
The vice presidential speeches are a great opportunity for the country to get to know the candidates' running mates. In 2008, all eyes were on Sarah Palin. In 2012, Paul Ryan stole the spotlight. In his speech at the RNC, Ryan generated close to 600,000 views. On the other side of the aisle, Joe Biden produced less enthusiasm online, driving around 130,000 views, about a quarter of Ryan's speech.
Rising Stars
San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, the first ever Latino keynote speaker at the DNC, inspired over 640,000 views with his speech. This performance landed him fourth place among all DNC speakers and fifth place among all convention speakers. New Jersey Govenor Chris Christie came in fourth among all republican speakers with just over 360,000 views, topping Mitt Romney by more than 70,000 views.
News Organizations
In addition to the speeches, we wanted to look at the overall coverage of the convention by news organizations. Many news organizations publish content directly to YouTube, so we focused our efforts on YouTube views for this analysis. We looked at views for ABC, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, The Associated Press, CBS, Al Jazeera, CNN International, NBC, USA Today, The LA Times, FOX, Reuters, and CSPAN. We also looked at other news organizations that publish videos to YouTube, but they didn't cover the convention on YouTube.
Overall, news organizations generated over 8.5 million views from the conventions. Over 6 million of these views were produced from clips for DNC while 2.5 million were from clips for the RNC. While the view counts suggest lopsided coverage, the number of assets uploaded for each convention tells a different story. News organizations uploaded over 460 clips for the DNC and over 400 for the RNC. This is certainly a discrepancy, yet it does not account for the overwhelming advantage the DNC coverage provided for views.
The discrepancy comes from the assets themselves – RNC speeches, on average, generated less views than DNC speeches. Many news organizations uploaded the speeches themselves, which were responsible for the overwhelming majority of views.
So, who won in terms of online views? ABC comes out on top with over 2.6 million views. 1.5 million views for ABC came from the DNC versus 1.1 million views for the RNC. CSPAN follows with just over 2 million views. The Washington Post comes in third, driven primarily by one clip it uploaded of Michelle Obama's speech (the most-watched both for Michelle Obama and The Washington Post), which accounts for the apparent massive discrepancy in coverage. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times round out the top five news organizations.
Cable news outlet CNN came in sixth place with over 440,000 views. CNN was the only news outlet that generated more views with clips for the RNC (223,000 views) than the DNC (217,000 views).
What do you think of the results? Are you surprised that the DNC had so many more views than the RNC? And what about ABC taking the lead among news organizations for YouTube coverage? Let us know what you think in the comments section below!
