Comparison of ratings for 2024 debate with previous debates
President Joe Biden recently addressed his debate performance at a campaign rally following a much-anticipated debate with former President Donald Trump on Thursday night. The debate drew an impressive 47.9 million viewers on television, as reported by CNN citing Nielsen’s preliminary ratings figures.
The 90-minute debate, which was hosted by CNN and simulcast across 22 networks, featured just the two presumptive party nominees and was characterized by rambling answers from the current president and lies and misstatements from his predecessor.
CNN provided a live feed of the event from its studios in Atlanta, free of charge, to other networks with conditions over its presentation and branding. The debate generated significant viewership, with CNN drawing 9.04 million television viewers to its flagship channel, as well as CNN Espanol and HLN. Fox News followed closely with 8.8 million viewers, ABC News had 8.7 million, and MSNBC drew 4.9 million viewers.
In addition to television viewership, the first presidential debate of 2024 also generated over 30 million views on CNN’s digital properties and YouTube. CNN highlighted that it was their biggest debate ever with 2.3 million concurrent live views at 9:47 p.m.
Comparing the ratings to past debate viewership, the nearly 48 million viewers for Thursday night’s debate marked a 35% decline from 2020 when more than 73 million people tuned in for the first debate between Biden and Trump across all TV networks. In 2016, a record-breaking 84 million viewers watched the first debate between Hillary Clinton and Trump.
CNN reflected on its own history, noting that the previous most-watched program came in 2015 during a Republican debate featuring Trump and GOP competitors, which averaged 23.1 million viewers.
