First, the U.S. Department of Labor reported a jobs increase and decreased unemployment, albeit very modest changes that were below expert projections. Secondly, Obama’s approval rating is now at 52 percent, the highest since he ordered the assassination of Osama bin Laden. Thirdly, Obama topped Romney in fundraising in August, the first time he’d beaten the Republican presidential nominee in four months.
The momentum continued as the Nielsen company reports that 35.7 million people watched the final night of the Democratic convention on Thursday between 10 and 11 p.m. EST. That’s when the president delivered his nomination acceptance speech. The previous week in Tampa, Fla., Mitt Romney had 30.3 million viewers for his speech at the GOP convention, with an assist from Clint Eastwood.
Unfortunately, themoderatevoice.com reports Obama could not outdo the ratings for his acceptance speech from four years ago. In 2008, Nielsen said candidate Barack Obama’s speech was seen by 38.3 million. But that estimate did not include PBS’ audience, which no doubt pushed the audience over 40 million.
Brian Williams and NBC won the network ratings war as their coverage of the convention was viewed by 7.38 million viewers on Thursday. CNN was second with 5.56 million viewers, MSNBC had 4.55 million, ABC had 4 million, PBS had 3.86 million, CBS had 3.29 million and Fox News Channel had 2.86 million, Nielsen said.
