The Democratic primary debate on Thursday drew the fewest viewers of any of the debate in the 2020 election cycle so far.
The debate, hosted by PBS NewsHour and Politico and broadcast on CNN, had an average of 6.2 million viewers, according to Nielsen Fast National data. CNN averaged slightly more than 4 million viewers, with PBS accounting a bit more than 2 million.
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Although an audience of that size would normally be staggering for any of the cable news networks, it came in as the least-watched debate. Last month’s debate, which was hosted by MSNBC and had 6.6 million viewers, was the lowest-rated debate until Thursday night.
The most recent debate, for which only seven candidates qualified, was approximately a third of the audience of the largest debate: the first one in June. That event, which was hosted by NBC, MSNBC, and Telemundo combined, had more than 18 million viewers.
ABC News attracted the largest audience on a single platform during September’s debate with more than 12 million viewers. That debate had an even larger audience because it was also shown on Univision.
Thursday night’s debate took place one day after the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Trump on two articles of impeachment.
The next debate is scheduled to take place on Jan. 14. Only former Vice President Joe Biden, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren qualify for the debate so far.
