Ratings for Harris Fox News interview blow Trump’s town hall out of water
The ratings for both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s latest Fox News appearances have been released – and they reveal the vice president pulled in more than double the viewers than her Republican rival.
With less than three weeks until Election Day and the national polls on a knife’s edge with Harris reduced to just under a 2.5-point lead, both presidential candidates are increasingly filling the airwaves.
On Wednesday evening, Harris sat down with Bret Baier, chief political anchor for Fox News, for a heated interview – marking her first on the network.
Just hours earlier, Trump’s Fox town hall in Cumming, Georgia, hit screens where the former president was joined by moderator Harris Faulkner, host of The Faulkner Focus, in front of an all-female, sit-in audience.
Now, final audience figures released by Fox News show Harris drew in 7.8 million viewers, while Trump’s showing garnered an audience of 3.1 million, according to data released by the network on Thursday.
Another 1.4 million people were said to have tuned in for the midnight replay of Harris’s interview.
A Fox News statement claimed that the vice president’s interview was the “most-watched interview of the 2024 election season” since President Joe Biden stepped off the Democratic ticket – eclipsing Harris and her running mate Tim Walz’s prime time CNN interview last month by almost two million viewers.
It added that Trump’s Faulkner Focus appearance marked the second highest-rated episode since the show was launched in January 2021.
Harris’s interview was, however, broadcast at 6pm ET, two hours before primetime – which Fox classes between 8pm and 11pm on weekdays – whereas Trump’s town hall aired at 11am.
Watchers aged between 25 and 54 accounted for 14.5 percent of overall viewing figures for Harris’s sitdown, while the same demographic accounted for 14.2 percent of those tuning in to The Faulkner Focus.
Trump’s town hall, which Fox News billed as focusing on women’s issues, saw the former president answer questions on reproductive laws and transgender rights.
At the event, which some political pundits suggest was supposed to soften his image with female voters, the former president labeled Alabama Senator Katie Britt “a fantastically attractive person,” before telling the all-female crowd: “I’m the father of IVF.”
Harris later mocked Trump’s self-prescribed moniker calling it “quite bizarre,” with Democrats more broadly warning that the overturning of Roe v Wade and rollback of abortion rights could pave the way for the GOP candidate to take aim at IVF access next.
Later on Wednesday, the vice president and Baier clashed for almost half an hour over illegal immigration, Biden and Trump himself.
Outside the heated exchange, both Harris and Baier faced backlash.
The Democratic presidential candidate was accused by the interviewer of being 15 minutes late to the studio – which was due to be recorded at 5pm before being aired at 6pm.
Baier was criticized for repeatedly interrupting and talking over Harris during several of her responses.