Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris' epic debate performance on Tuesday was watched by 67.1 million Americans, according to the media analytics firm Nielsen. That’s nearly 16 million more than the number who tuned in to see Donald Trump face off with President Joe Biden in June.
As important as the number of viewers could be who those viewers were. Among the top 10 markets for the debate were a number of cities in swing states, including Pittsburgh and Philadelphia at the top of the list, according to Mike Mulvihill, an analyst for Fox. Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Detroit also had high levels of viewership.
West Palm Beach, Florida, was also near the top in viewers glued to a screen. Did you like what you saw, neighbors of Trump?
Trump’s campaign workers and surrogates were certainly not pleased, and now they’re working overtime to clean up the mess left by Trump’s angry, conspiracy-driven performance.
Host network ABC drew the biggest audience of the 17 networks that broadcast the debate, even if it did earn Trump’s undying hate by fact-checking the worst of his lies. ABC saw over 19 million viewers, while NBC, the second most viewed, saw just over 10 million (not counting the more than 6 million on MSNBC).
Fox News came in third overall, with around 9.1 million viewers, well ahead of CBS (6.2 million) and Fox’s broadcast network (4.9 million), while CNN trailed the field, with about 4.4 million. Telemundo and Univision brought in 2.1 million viewers between them, with 295,000 watching on Fox Business and the remaining 4.7 million watching on outlets not broken out by Nielsen.
When it came to the ages of those watching the debate, Nielsen reported over 6.4 million viewers between ages 18 and 34, 16.8 million between 35 and 54, and 41.3 million among those over 55.
Taylor Swift
That may seem like the debate was most watched by older people. But then, that’s also the group that votes in the largest numbers. Besides, the average age of a network primetime viewer in 2024 is 64.6 years old. So the debate actually skewed younger than many of the most popular shows. (Congratulations to Fox’s “Bob’s Burgers.” That’s the only English-language show on broadcast TV where the median age of viewers is under 50.)
Even if the debate didn’t hit many younger voters, there was another event that evening that definitely woke up some of them: Superstar Taylor Swift endorsed Harris. And there’s a good reason why the MAGA movement is fuming over it. Swift’s most recent album sold over 2 million copies in the United States, and that’s barely a hint at the clout she carries. In the 24 hours following her endorsement, her post sent 405,999 visitors to vote.gov, which provides information on how to register to vote, among other things.
And this, all of this, is just from Tuesday night. It doesn’t reflect how many Americans saw Trump ranting that “They’re eating dogs!” on the Wednesday morning news or in clips online.
In the aftermath of Trump’s train wreck, his allies are working overtime to find some way to spin his appearance. But a lot of them remain frustrated by Trump's inability to concentrate on issues and his insistence on raging about conspiracy theories.
Now the campaign seems to be leaning heavily on campaign ads to carry the burden of delivering the talking points they hoped Trump would press during the debate. Instead, Harris effectively baited Trump into talking about crowd sizes, his disdain for his alma mater, how Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán is the only European leader who will talk to him, and, of course, the hoax of pet-eating immigrants.
Donald Trump
No matter how hard Trump's supporters want to just claim he won and move on, that’s not what The New York Times reports they are saying behind the scenes.
A tip for Trump’s advisors: Tuesday night is what happens when someone goes into a debate convinced they don’t need to prepare, and meets someone who has honed their responses to a razor’s edge while studying her opponent’s every weakness.
Harris not only managed to fit her answers into the two-minute space allocated for responses, but she also ensured that each one of those answers included a shiny bit of bait that Trump was physically incapable of resisting.
She played him like a fiddle. And a very big audience came to her concert.
”THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE,” Trump screamed on his Truth Social platform on Thursday.
For less than the price of any streaming service, you can help make sure that America keeps playing the song of democracy, freedom, and nobody-is-eating-the-pets. Send $5 to the Harris/Walz campaign today.
