“It's clear that the ratings drop for last night's debate was largely due to the fact that television ratings in June were significantly lower than in October,” Fox analyst Michael Mulvihill wrote on X.
Viewership for debates fluctuates with each election cycle. The most-watched debate of the first election cycle this century was between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on September 26, 2016, with 84 million viewers. The average viewership for the three debates that year was 74 million.
Typically, debate viewership drops off after the first debate of an election cycle, with the second debate of the 2020 election drawing just 63 million viewers. But that trend is likely to reverse this year, given that ABC's September 10 debate will take place so close to the election.
CNN produced and ran the event while providing a feed to other television networks, who had to follow a set of guidelines in order to air the broadcast.
CNN's coverage of the debate drew 9.5 million viewers, Fox News 9.3 million and MSNBC 4.1 million. If CNN had not allowed other networks to broadcast the debate, CNN would likely have drawn a larger audience.
This figure is far from an accurate representation of the debate's viewership, taking into account how many people watched the debate through streaming platforms and clips shared on social media platforms: Nearly 10 million people watched the debate on CNN's YouTube page, which was also embedded on the websites of many news publications.
This story has been updated to include complete ratings data from the Nielsen ratings agency.
