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More than 42 million viewers tuned into network and cable news coverage of the 2024 presidential election results. While that seems like a good thing, it is actually a dramatic drop from the last race for the White House.
According to Nielsen, 42.3 million watched coverage between 7-11 PM ET on Tuesday evening. The first call that the race was won by Republican nominee Donald Trump came at 1:22 AM ET.
While an audience of 42.3 million seems massive, it is actually a drop of more than 25% compared to the 2020 election pitting Trump against Joe Biden. On that November night, 56.9 million viewers watched primetime coverage. That race, famously, wasn’t settled until the weekend.
Fox News led both network and cable news with an average audience of 9.8 million viewers. ABC News was the highest network news channel with 5.7 million viewers.
In the Persons 35-54 demographic, 11.4 million viewers tuned into the coverage. In the Persons 55+ demo, 24.4 million were represented.
The 42.3 million viewers take into account the audiences from ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, The CW, Merit Street Media, Scripps News, Telemundo, Univision, CNBC, CNN, CNNe, Fox News, Fox Business Network, MSNBC, Newsmax, NewsNation, and PBS.
