Tuesday’s combative, high-energy debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump drew 67.1 million television viewers, far ahead of the 51.3 million viewers who watched the June debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, according to numbers released Wednesday evening by Nielsen.
By Jeremy Barr
That figure puts Tuesday’s event ahead of the second debate of the 2020 presidential cycle, which drew 63 million viewers.
Not surprisingly, debate host ABC drew the largest audience, 19 million viewers, followed by NBC, with 9.7 million. With 8.7 million viewers, Fox News was the most-watched cable news network for the event, followed by MSNBC and CNN.
Still, no debate this cycle is likely to come close to matching the audience for the first matchup between Trump and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, which drew a massive 84 million viewers.
Over the past eight years, a considerable number of Americans have stopped paying for and watching cable networks, meaning that more viewership is moving to streaming services that are not tracked by Nielsen.
Many of those streaming services, including free offerings from major television networks, saw massive viewership on Tuesday night as well. NBC’s streaming service, NBC News Now, attracted its largest prime-time audience on record, up 89 percent from its previous high, on the final night of this year’s Democratic National Convention. ABC said on Wednesday that 7.4 million people watched the debate on its ABC News Live streaming service, bringing the total audience to 26.4 million.
Tuesday’s debate, which was hosted by ABC, was generally expected to draw more viewers than CNN’s debate, which was held during a time of year — late June — when television viewership is generally lower. It was also held much earlier in the calendar than previous debates, which generally take place in the fall.
