So Bigly: More than 67 million Americans watched Harris debate Trump, dwarfing ratings for the Biden-Trump showdown

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Initial ratings for the September 10 presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris show that the number of viewers dwarfed that for June’s debate between the former president and Joe Biden.

Nielsen figures show that the ABC News-hosted debate drew in 67.14 million viewers across 17 networks on which it was simulcast.

June’s debate between Biden and Trump, hosted by CNN, had 51.3 million viewers across 16 networks.

Many observers saw Biden’s performance in June’s debate as disastrous, immediately leading to calls for him to step aside as the Democratic candidate for November’s election.

Tuesday night’s primetime broadcast was the first time Harris and Trump have debated following President Biden’s decision to exit the race in favor of the vice president.

It was also the first time the two candidates had met face to face.

As with the CNN debate, ABC News made the broadcast available to rival networks.

As host, ABC came out on top by far against other networks with an estimated 19.05 million viewers.

NBC News got 10.08 million, Fox News 9.06 million, MSNBC 6.38 million, CBS News 6.19 million, Fox Broadcasting 4.85 million, CNN 4.39 million, Telemundo 1.16 million, and Fox Business Network 295,000.

Other networks that simulcast the debate include Merit Street, Scripps News, Univision, BET, CNNe, Newsmax, NewsNation, and PBS.

When broken down into the key news-watching demographic of people aged between 25 and 54, ABC News came top with 6.6 million, followed by NBC News3.74 million, Fox News 1.94 million, Fox Broadcasting 1.90 million, CNN 1.58 million, CBS News 1.90 million, and MSNBC with 1.24 million.

A further breakdown of age brackets provided by Nielsen states that an estimated 6.47 million viewers were aged 18-34, 16.88 million were aged 35-54, and 41.35 million were 55 and above.

After initial figures were released earlier on Wednesday, Analyst Mike Mulvihill slightly under-estimated the possible total viewership at 65 million, explaining that “an overnight rating of 32.8 and a 70 share across eight networks. That’s +28% higher than the Trump-Biden debate earlier this year.”

He continues: “The 28% growth in the overnight ratings implies a national audience of over 65 million, but the overnights haven’t been all that reliable as a predictor of the nationals lately, at least in sports, so I’d make that projection with low confidence.”

Based on the initial figures, of the top ten TV markets tuning in on Tuesday night were five cities in key swing states: Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Detroit.

To put the numbers in context, an estimated 73.1 million people tuned in to watch the first debate between Biden and Trump in 2020 — the third biggest debate audience on record.

Currently, the most-watched debate in recent history was Trump against Hillary Clinton in September 2016 with 84 million viewers.

In second place was Jimmy Carter against Ronald Reagan in October 1980 with 80.6 million people tuning in.

Trump’s second debate against Clinton in October 2016 pulled in 71.6 million viewers.