Donald Trump’s Speech Grabs 14.8 Million Extra Likely Voters

A net total of 14.8 million viewers of Donald Trump’s convention speech are more likely to vote for him, according to the combination of the just-released TV ratings and the viewer poll that CNN tried to bury.

The simple math explains the panic among CNN and other establishment media outlets once they realized the speech they repeatedly called “dark” and “Nixon-like” got a strong positive reaction in quick polls. 

At 5:25 p.m. Friday, Variety and others reported that 32.2 million viewers watched Trump’s speech.

CNN poll results of viewers indicated that 75 percent favored the speech. More importantly, 56 percent liked it so much they were more likely to vote for Trump, and only 10 percent were less likely to vote for Trump.

Fifty-six percent of 32.2 million viewers translates into 18 million viewers who are more likely to vote for Trump. Subtract the 3.2 million were less likely to vote for Trump, leaving him with a net positive of 14.8 million viewers who were more likely to vote for Trump as a result of the speech.

The vast majority of people who watch speeches are voters. Perhaps a couple of million of those viewers cannot vote — the youth, illegal aliens, and felons who have not had their voting rights restored — but even non-voters who watch something that moves them tend to talk about it and move people around them.

The panic narrative from CNN and others was that more Republicans than Democrats watch an RNC speech. That might help explain a little of the 75 percent, but it does not explain the 56 percent more likely to vote — as anyone who was committed to vote for Trump prior to the debate would be part of the 34 percent who said their vote was unchanged by the speech — because they were already voting for Trump so could not become “more likely” to vote for him.

This also does not count the multiplier effect of Trump’s reported 22.5 million followers on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

A boost of anywhere close to 14.8 million more net votes for Trump is several times what he would need to flip President Barack Obama’s 4.8 million vote-advantage in 2012 — 65.4 million votes to 60.6 million votes.

In a race that Breitbart News calculated as a 266-272 electoral-vote win for Hillary Clinton coming into the convention, the simple math says Trump got several times the benefit he needed at RNC in Cleveland.

Happily for Clinton, there are still months to go before the election.