Donald Trump defended the idea of him being reelected as the POTUS during his Thursday night convention speech, but overnight Nielsen ratings suggest his appeal wasn't as highly rated as Joe Biden's address about a week ago. This coincides with the poll ratings across several states that show the president lagging behind his challenger.

About 23.8 million viewers tuned in to watch Trump's RNC address coverage across thirteen cable and broadcast networks, while 24.6 million viewers watched Biden's DNC address on twelve of those same networks. With fewer networks counted in the total earlier in the day, the gap between Trump and Biden was even wider.

Nielsen's final audience estimate was released on Friday, indicating Trump's speech was watched by a million viewers, but Biden still surpassed him in terms of the number of viewers. Moreover, the Democratic convention was higher rated than the Republican convention when the overall audience for all four days is counted.

Celebrating the overnight ratings win, Biden's campaign used it to take a jab at the president. Trump's obsession with ratings is well-documented as he has tweeted about ratings several times, usually inaccurately.

"Great Ratings & Reviews Last Night. Thank you," he tweeted on Aug. 28. He did not react when initial viewership numbers showed him lagging behind the former vice president.

Trump is likely to refer to Fox News Channel's ratings instead of the final result. Fox News had the biggest audience of any channels with over 9 million viewers on Thursday. In a press release, Fox News announced that it had the highest-rated prime time average in terms of total viewers during any convention in cable news history.

While Nielsen's data sets include traditional TV viewership across the country, it largely ignores other digital forms of viewership such as streaming, which means that the figures are not complete. Furthermore, it isn't possible to determine the number of people who watched just Trump, just Biden, or both speeches.

While the ratings do not represent voter behavior, it is worth considering them for other reasons. Average viewership for this year's conventions is lower rated than 2016 when Trump accepted the GOP nomination with Hillary Clinton in the opposition.

Clinton's speech had an average viewership of 29.8 million, and Trump's speech averaged at 32.2 million viewers. Relishing the rating victory, national press secretary for the Biden campaign TJ Ducklo asked Biden rapid response director Andrew Bates if Trump cared about his television ratings, via a tweet.