The highly anticipated debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on Monday lived up to its billing, drawing more than 80 million viewers and setting a new record in the 60-year history of televised presidential debates, according to Nielsen.
The final numbers are still being tallied by Nielsen. But the debate averaged a total of 80.9 million viewers across 12 of the channels that carried it live.
Nielsen traditionally measures viewers who watch via traditional TV at home. That means people who watched the debate at parties, bars, restaurants, and offices were not counted.
Nor do those numbers include viewers from PBS or C-SPAN. Full numbers will be available later Tuesday, and those numbers won’t include the millions who watched the debate online.
To find the record holder for viewership of a presidential debate, you have to go back 36 years.
The debate viewership number to beat was 81 million, set back in 1980, when Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan debated just once before the election.
Nielsen also confirmed that there was no fall-off in viewers as the debate wore on—people were glued to their seats.
Nielsen data confirms that viewership stayed high the entire time. Contrary to some speculation, there was not a big drop-off after the first hour of the 98-minute debate.
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