Fox News won an easy victory in the ratings battle for election night coverage, marking the second time in a row the network beat rivals CNN and MSNBC in viewership for presidential election results.
Fox News was watched by 10.3 million viewers from 8 to 11 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, according to Nielsen data.
Ratings were more than double those of CNN, which trailed MSNBC for the first time on presidential election night.
MSNBC’s coverage, anchored by Rachel Maddow, averaged 6 million viewers, better than CNN’s 5.1 million viewers.
CNN, owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, lost nearly half of the 9.6 million people who watched during the 2020 presidential election.
At Fox News, the coverage, anchored by Brett Baier and Martha McCallum, fell slightly from its record 13.8 million viewers in 2020.
MSNBC was down from 7.3 million in 2020.
Among the broadcast networks, ABC had 5.7 million viewers Tuesday, NBC had 5.3 million and CBS had 3.5 million, Nielsen said.
Overall TV viewership Former President Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, There was a sharp decline in the last presidential election cycle.
Nielsen said 42.3 million viewers across 18 networks watched the election coverage, down 25% from 2020. During that cycle, information about the results was not given for several days. Democrat Joe Biden was ultimately declared the winner over then-incumbent Trump.
This time, Trump was declared the winner by most outlets on Wednesday morning.
The decline in viewership is due to viewers shifting away from traditional TV viewing, especially among viewers under 50, who get their news by streaming it or on social media.
On the streaming front, Fox News said it had 47.2 million views between 6 p.m. and 3 p.m. ET on its digital sites.
MSNBC’s YouTube channel had its strongest day on record with 30 million video views, the company said.
MSNBC said that its “Kornacki-Cam”, which provided a continuous look at journalist Steve Kornacki’s analysis of the vote, garnered more than 9 million videos on YouTube.
