Obama vs. Phelps: It's Down to the Wire

Never mind John McCain. How's Barack Obama doing compared with Michael Phelps?

The opening night of the Democratic National Convention on Monday attracted a TV audience of 22.3 million people, according to figures released Tuesday by the Nielsen Company.

Those viewers, by the way, were spread over eight networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, BET, and TV One); nearly half were over 55 years old.

The Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, by contrast, drew 34.9 million viewers on August 8. And all of them went to one network: NBC.

The tighter race for TV ratings is actually between Phelps, the swimmer who won eight gold medals, and David Cook, the singer who won the latest full series of American Idol. When Cook won the title in May, 31.7 million people over the age of 2 were watching.

To those not keeping up: Phelps wins--again.

But that's only on old-school media. When tracking popularity as measured by internet search terms, Google Trends says the competition goes back to Obama vs. Phelps.

The charismatic Democratic presidential nominee has been a steady standout performer so far this year, and leads the swimmer by a wide margin in aggregate searches.

But Phelps still takes the medal for peak performance. On August 17, the day Phelps won his eighth gold medal of the Beijing Games, Google processed more searches for his name than it did for Obama's on any single day this year.

What does it all mean? If Michael Phelps were running for president, there'd be a clear leader. Now there's an idea....

by Willow Duttge and Zubin Jelveh