Barack Obama ‘s speech to the DNC may have rated its socks off, but TV ratings of John McCain‘s speech show the Republican drew an additional 500,000 viewers than Obama.

Nielsen said that 38.9 million people watched McCain accept the GOP nomination, while Obama reached 38.4 on the commercial networks. The Huffington Post said that adding in PBS (public tv stations) Obama and McCain were about neck and neck on ratings.

Sarah Palin was another big ratings winner, according to RealClearPolitics, which said that her VP nomination acceptance speech reached 37 million people:

“Sarah Palin’s speech generated 37.2 million viewers, just a 1.1 million viewers fewer than watch Barack Obama’s Invesco Field acceptance speech. As Nielsen notes, only six networks carried Palin’s speech compared with ten for Obama’s.”