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Tuesday night’s coverage of the 2024 presidential election received tremendous ratings and, as expected, Fox News led the pack with early numbers.
As viewers followed the results of the race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, Fox News attracted 9.77 million viewers during its primetime coverage from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET, according to Nielsen National Fast Ratings. This story will be updated when final numbers arrive later Wednesday.
Fox News had the largest audience among the major cable news networks, followed by MSNBC with 5.5 million viewers in primetime, surpassing CNN’s primetime audience of 4.7 million viewers. The 2024 election marks the first time in network history that MSNBC outperformed CNN on presidential election night.
While CNN streamed its coverage live on Max and other digital platforms, CNN’s Election Day coverage attracted more than 13.7 million multi-platform viewers, ranking as the highest rated day on CNN Max since its launch. During Election Day, nearly 20% of Max viewers watched election coverage.
On the broadcast side, ABC News outperformed its competitors with 5.67 million viewers in primetime, ahead of NBC with 5.32 million viewers. CBS followed with 3.49 million viewers, while Fox drew 2.14 million viewers. As ABC gained 2.16 million viewers in the 25-54 demo and 1.82 viewers in the 18-49 demo, its Election Night 2024 coverage marked the first time in 16 years that ABC dominated all three demonstrations during Election Night.
In 2020, election night coverage of the race between Joe Biden and Trump, whose results were finalized over the weekend, attracted 56.92 million viewers across 21 channels.
At the time, the viewership for 2020’s election night coverage was down 20.3% from the 2016 race, which saw an audience of 71.43 million when Trump declared victory over Hillary Clinton. The 2012 election night drew 66.84 million viewers, while the 2008 coverage drew 71.47 million viewers and the 2004 election night drew 55.05 million viewers.
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