Trump-Harris Debate Watched by 67.1 Million Viewers, Up 31% vs. Trump-Biden (Final Update)
More than 67 million viewers tuned in for the first presidential debate between former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Based on final Nielsen numbers (now including streaming), 67.1 million people watched on Tuesday night, with ABC leading all outlets with an audience of 19.1 million. NBC followed with 10.1 million viewers, while Fox News easily led the cable news pack with north of 9 million viewers.
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Fox News Media as a whole, with Fox proper (4.9 mil), Fox Business (295K), FoxNews.com and Fox Nation all folded in, accounted for 14.4 million viewers. MSNBC drew 6.4 million, CBS did 6.2 mil, and CNN delivered 4.4 mil.
Update: ABC News Live on streaming and digital platforms, Including Hulu and Disney+, added another 7 mil to the final total.
Trump’s first presidential debate of this election season, opposite then-Democratic nominee President Joe Biden, delivered an audience of 51.3 million. The all-time record for a presidential debate, meanwhile, was set in 2016, when Hillary Clinton’s first face-off against Trump was witnessed by 84 million viewers.
ABC News’ David Muir and Linsey Davis moderated Tuesday night’s audience-free spectacle from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. The debate ran for more than 90 minutes, with two commercial breaks.
In a TVLine reader poll, 74% of respondents said that Harris won the debate (as of press time), while moderators Muir and Davis earned an average grade of “C+.”
In the aforementioned first presidential debate, Trump trounced Biden (with 69% of the vote), while CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash earned an average grade of “C+” as moderators.
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