Election Night Ratings: Which Network Had the Highest Viewership?
Election Night 2024 has come to pass, and as viewers anxiously awaited to see which candidate would reign victorious — Kamala Harris or Donald Trump — another race was taking place on TV with networks competing for coveted ratings.
The big networks, including ABC, CBS, and NBC, preempted their usual Tuesday night TV slate for live election coverage offering up-to-the-minute updates on the progress of Harris and Trump’s respective campaigns for the presidential office, with some coverage running late into the night and continuing the next morning.
So, which network came out on top in the ratings department for the night? Was it NBC? ABC? CBS? MSNBC? Fox News? The answer might surprise you.
ABC / Craig Ambrosio
According to network totals, ABC came out on top with 5.665 million viewers overall commanding the largest groups in two key demos with adults 25-54 totaling 2.156 million and adults 18-49 totaling 1.819 million. Trailing with 5.318 overall viewers was NBC which pulled in 2.115 million in the 25-54 demo and 1.762 million in adults 18-49.
CBS came in third with 3.490 million overall viewers among which were 1.207 million in adults 25-54 and 1.027 million in adults 18-49. Rounding out the big four was Fox with 2.141 million viewers with 896K in adults 25-54 and 671K in adults 18-49. When it comes to the network breakdown this is the first time in 16 years that ABC has led all three demos during election night.
Overall, primetime coverage for the election averaged around 36.6 million viewers across the big four and the three biggest cable news channels CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. The total is a steep drop from 2020’s 50.7 million who tuned into those same news outlets. On the cable side of things, Fox News led the night with 9.8 million viewers tuning in followed by MSNBC’s 5.5 million and CNN’s 4.71 million.
Where did you watch election night news coverage? Was it one network or did you rotate channels as the results unfolded? Let us know in the comments section, below.
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