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Tuesday night’s election coverage for the 2024 presidential election was down more than 25% when compared to the 2020 election.
As viewers tuned in to watch results spill in for the race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, election night coverage brought in 42.3 million viewers across 18 TV networks from 7:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. EST, according to Nielsen live-plus-same-day figures.
That’s down 25.6% from the 2020 election, whose night-of coverage for the race between Joe Biden and Trump (and their results that ended up stretching into the weekend) brought in 56.92 million viewers across 21 channels.
Viewership for 2024 election coverage was historically low when compared to recent presidential elections, including the 2016 race, which saw a viewership of 71.43 million as Trump claimed victory against Hillary Clinton. Election night in 2012 reached 66.84 million viewers, while 2008 coverage brought in 71.47 million viewers and 2004’s election night scored 55.05 million viewers.
When breaking down the demographics, election coverage across networks brought in 4.39 million viewers among adults 18-34, whereas adults 35-54 accounted for 11.4 million viewers and adults 55 and over accounted for 24.35 million viewers.
Fox News brought in 13.6 million viewers during its primetime coverage from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. EST, scoring the biggest audience among the major cable news networks. MSNBC came in 2nd place with over 6 million viewers in primetime, beating CNN’s primetime audience of 5.1 million viewers. The 2024 election marks the first time in network history that MSNBC outpaced CNN on a presidential election night.
As CNN live-streamed its coverage across Max and other digital platforms, CNN’s election day coverage was live streamed by nearly 14 million viewers, totaling to over 44 million viewers when combining CNN’s live coverage across linear, digital and Max. Election day ranked as the highest day of viewership on CNN Max since its launch, with approximately 20% of Max’s Tuesday viewership watching their election coverage.
Likewise, MSNBC’s “Kornacki Cam” of Steve Kornacki garnered more than 9 million video starts, the largest livestream on record for MSNBC YouTube. NBC News Now also posted good online engagement, surpassing more than 100 million views. The platform also says it ranked no. 1 YouTube throughout the night, outpacing viewership for ABC News and CBS News combined.
On the broadcast side, ABC News outpaced its competition with 5.9 million viewers in primetime, ahead of NBC with 5.5 million viewers. CBS came next with 3.6 million viewers as Fox brought in 2 million viewers. NewsNation scored 265,000 total viewers during primetime.
