2nd night of the convention: September 3, 2008, 5:49 pm Audience for GOP Convention Falls from 2004 Amy Schatz reports on the presidential race. Viewing numbers for the second night of the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., are out and it’s not particularly good news for the party. Some 21.5 million people watched the Republican convention Tuesday night, Nielsen reported this afternoon, down slightly from the 22.1 million who watched second night coverage four years ago. By comparison, almost 26 million people watched the second night of the Democratic convention last week, when Hillary Clinton addressed the crowd. That said, the numbers racked up last night by Republicans weren’t necessarily all that bad because 2004 was a better-than-average year for the GOP in terms of convention ratings. The 2004 Republican convention was watched, on average, by about 2 million more households than the Democratic convention, Nielsen data shows. It was the first time since Gerald Ford was the nominee that Republicans captured higher convention ratings than Democrats. Things are a bit different this year, however, and Democrats scored their highest ratings in history last week, when Barack Obama’s speech on the closing night of the Democratic convention at Invesco Field in Denver drew a record 38.4 million viewers. It’s not surprising that a greater number of African-American viewers tuned into the second night of the Democratic convention compared to the GOP gathering, but Hispanic viewers, who might be more inclined to vote Republican, did as well. An estimated 850,000 Hispanic viewers tuned in Tuesday night, Nielsen said, compared to 1.35 million who watched the second night of the Democratic convention. No ratings were recorded for the first night of this year’s GOP convention since most of the festivities were called off because of Hurricane Gustav.