Three days before the start of the Republican National Convention, YouTube announced its plan to stream both the RNC and the Democratic equivalent that would occur the next week. The video site followed through on its promise, and millions of people tuned in. According to data, the RNC and DNC live streams combined to receive more than nine million views, with speeches by presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton serving as the biggest draws.
On TV, the DNC averaged four million more viewers per day than the RNC, but on YouTube, the two conventions put up almost identical numbers. The Democratic Party’s Clinton coronation drew 4.6 million total views, with the Republican Party’s Trump-a-thon right behind it at 4.5 million. The average watch time for both streams was exactly the same, standing at 25 minutes per viewer.
Ironically enough, the Dems came out on top in an area that, on TV, favored the GOP. Trump’s July 21st acceptance speech outdrew Clinton’s July 28th address by about 1.6 million TV viewers, but on YouTube, it was the latter event that earned the highest peak viewership. The DNC live stream peaked at 250,000 concurrent viewers during Clinton’s speech, while the RNC high point (during Trump’s speech) was 217,000 viewers.
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While the conventions are now over, the most important videos from the past two weeks are still available on demand. If you’d like to view them, you can head over the the official channels YouTube set up for the RNC and DNC, respectively. Here, for example, is President Obama’s speech from the third night of the Democratic coronation:
