CNN had a huge Wednesday as America eagerly awaited results from the 2020 presidential election. We didn’t get much in the way of a result from the Trump vs. Biden race, but CNN sure got a whole bunch of eyeballs.
The cable news network topped Wednesday primetime (8 p.m. to 11 p.m.) with an average of 7.1 million total viewers, besting Tuesday’s top channel Fox News by about 800,000 people. MSNBC finished a semi-distant third with 4.8 million viewers.
CNN was also No. 1 on the night in the key news demographic, adults 25-54. While Fox News Channel finished second there, NBCUniversal’s broadcast network NBC edged out its cable news channel MSNBC by 70,000 demo viewers.
CNN also won “total day” outright, a timeframe that for these purposes counted 3 a.m. Wednesday to 3 a.m. Thursday. As a matter of fact, in that 24-hour view, Wednesday was CNN’s second most-watched day in 40 years.
On actual Election Night 2020, Fox News Channel dominated primetime television with an average of 13.6 million viewers. All told, 21 channels combined to deliver 56.9 million primetime viewers overall on Tuesday, which was 20% down from Election Night 2016. Of the 56.9 million viewers, CNN was responsible for 9.1 million.
CNN Digital had its best day ever yesterday, CNN said, boasting 116 global unique users.