Ratings for first presidential debate down sharply from 2020

“It’s very clear that the decline in last night’s debate viewership was mostly about TV viewing being sharply lower in June than it is in October,” Michael Mulvihill, an analytics expert for Fox, wrote on X.

Debate viewership has fluctuated from cycle to cycle. This century, the highest-rated first debate of a campaign cycle was the Sept. 26, 2016, matchup between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, which attracted 84 million viewers. The three contests that year averaged 74 million viewers.

Debate viewership normally tails off after the first debate of the cycle, and the second debate of the 2020 election only brought in 63 million viewers. But that trend will probably be reversed this year, considering that ABC’s scheduled debate on Sept. 10 will occur much closer to the election.

While CNN produced and operated the event, the network provided the feed to other television networks, which were required to adhere to a set of guidelines to be able to air the broadcast.

CNN’s broadcast of the debate drew 9.5 million viewers, Fox News 9.3 million and MSNBC 4.1 million. Had CNN not allowed other networks to air the debate, CNN probably would have attracted a larger audience.

The number does not come close to actually representing the viewership of the debate, considering how many people watched the event on a streaming platform or through clips shared on a social media platform. 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.