Election night ratings reveal which network came out on top
Fox News – which was first to declare Trump the winner – garnered an average of 10.3 million viewers between 8pm and 11pm ET on Tuesday evening, according to Nielsen data
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.While Donald Trump and Kamala Harris battled it out for the presidency, a war was being fought in the shadows among the networks trying to draw in viewers to their election coverage.
Millions of Americans were glued to their TV sets on Tuesday night, watching the results roll in, with one news channel trouncing its competitors in the ratings: Fox News.
Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum led the network’s primetime election coverage on Democracy 2024, garnering an average of 10.3 million viewers between 8pm and 11pm ET on Tuesday evening, according to Nielsen data.
It marks the second consecutive election cycle where Fox News – a Rupert Murdoch majority-owned, right-leaning network – raked in the most TV viewers on election night.
MSNBC came in second, with 6 million average viewers. It marks the first time that MSNBC has topped CNN, with the network bringing in just 5.1 million viewers – almost half of its 9.6 million audience in the 2020 presidential election.
ABC brought in 5.7 million viewers, NBC 5.5 million and CBS 3.6 million.
Fox News’s audience was still down from its record 13.8 million viewers during the 2020 election.
Overall, network ratings also plunged by about 25 percent, with 42.3 million people tuning into Tuesday’s broadcasts across 18 networks – compared with 56.9 million last election cycle.
A shift away from linear television in lieu of streaming services and social media, particularly among those under the age of 50, is believed to be blamed in part for the waning figures.
Fox News also topped YouTube’s live-streaming charts, amassing more than 1.1 million streams at its peak on election night, according to data from live-streaming database Streams Charts.
All-in-all, almost 84 million hours of content was streamed online for election coverage on Tuesday, with more than 80 percent of views coming from YouTube, Streams Charts found.
MSNBC announced that its YouTube channel had a record-breaking 30 million video views in a day on Tuesday.
As news outlets began declaring Donald Trump the winner on Wednesday morning, Fox News maintained its dominance in the ratings.
Fox – which was first to declare Trump the winner – said it topped out at 7.4 million viewers during the 1am hour when its Decision Desk called Pennsylvania for Trump, giving him the 270 Electoral College votes needed to take the White House once more.
Other networks, newspapers and news agencies called the race for Trump later on Wednesday morning.
“FOX News dominated every aspect of this historic election cycle,” Fox News Media’s CEO Suzanne Scott said in a statement.
“From primary debates to town halls to being the only network to conduct interviews with all four candidates in both parties in a one-week span as Bret Baier helmed the most buzzed about interview of the race.”
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments