I believe that many people tuned in to hear her speech last night simply because she's been painted as a trainwreck-in-progress and America does love a good trainwreck. But Neilsen released the numbers today and they are pretty damned impressive when you look at turnout for her speech versus the Dem numero uno. Keep in mind these numbers are for VIEWERSHIP only, no bearing on votes (well, not explicit anyways).

Palin beat Obama in Persons 55+ and multi person white households; in the 18-34 demo (Obamas home base) Palin drew 81% of his audience; In the 18-49 demo she drew 88% of his audience; Palin's speach beat Biden's for viewership in all categories except multi-person black households.

The Sara Palin speech generated 37.2 million viewers, just a 1.1 million viewers short of Barack Obama's record-breaking speech on Day 4 of the Democratic Convention. The Palin speech was carried on only six networks while the Obama speech was carried on ten (including BET, TV One, Univision and Telemundo).

Palin attracted a large female audience (19.5 million women, or 4.9 million more than Day 3 of the Democratic Convention).

Ratings for viewers 55+ (25.2) continue to be about ten times higher than for teens (2.2)

Day 3 for the GOP attracted more Hispanic viewers (1.4 million) than Day 3 of the Democratic Convention (1.2 million), even though Univision and Telemundo did not carry the speech.

Oh and this link is pretty interesting ....it's a live blog of former Hillary supporters and their play-by-play of Palin's speech. The comments range from absolute rabid fangrrl anti-Palin to "wow, I love her earrings."