Vance-Walz Vice Presidential Debate on Track for More than 40 Million Viewers

The only debate between two major party candidates Vice President It attracted a huge audience in 2024; but it wasn’t as big as it was four years ago.

Early Nielsen ratings for Tuesday’s match Governor of Minnesota Tim WalzDemocratic vice presidential candidate and Republican candidate Sen. J.D. Vance shows 38.62 million viewers watched the four major broadcast networks and the three largest cable news affiliates (CNN, Fox News and MSNBC). Fox Business added another 255,000 viewers.

Final ratings, which will include a few more channels, will likely bring the total to between 45 million and 50 million viewers; This is in line with the historical average of Vice Presidential debates but well below what was expected. 57.92 million people Those who watched the 2020 debate between Vice President Mike Pence and then-Sen. Kamala Harris (who leads the Democratic ticket this year).

Before Tuesday, the 11 vice presidential debates from 1976-2020 averaged about 46.5 million viewers (there was no vice presidential debate in 1980).

CBS News It produced the debate, moderated by Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan, and the channel had the largest audience of all the individual broadcasts, with 9.14 million viewers. Fox News came in second with 7.69 million viewers, followed by ABC (6.1 million), NBC (5.44 million), MSNBC (4.65 million), CNN (3.18 million) and the Fox broadcast network (2 million). 42 million) followed.

Past Vice Presidential debates have ranged from a high of 69.9 million viewers in 2008 (Joe Biden and Sarah Palin) to a low of 26.6 million viewers in 1996 (Al Gore and Jack Kemp). Since 1976, average audiences have been about 25 percent smaller than those attending presidential debates.

This year’s two presidential debates averaged 59.2 million viewers. 51.27 million for Biden and Donald Trump in June before Biden ended his re-election campaign and 67.14 million for Harris and Trump in September.