Nearly 11 Million Viewers Across 2 Networks Watched Last Night’s Debate

By A.J. Katz Comment

The numbers for last night’s CNN-Univision Democratic debate are in, and they’re not half bad.

On CNN TV, 9.9 million total viewers and 3 million adults 25-54 watched last night’s debate from Washington, featuring Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. 848,000 total viewers and 344,000 TV viewers tuned in to the debate on Univision.

On CNN en Español (CNNE), an additional 80,000 total viewers, 30,000 adults 25-54 tuned in.

An additional 609,000 live streamed the average minute of the debate on digital platforms.

That gives last night’s debate a total of 10.83 million TV viewers across two TV networks, which means more people watched the CNN-Univision Democratic debate than any other CNN debate this election cycle. It was also the second highest rated Democratic debate ever to air on CNN (following Las Vegas, Oct. 13, 2015).

The debate moderated by Jake Tapper, CNN anchor and chief Washington correspondent; Dana Bash, CNN chief political correspondent and Ilia Calderón, co-anchor, Noticiero Univision and co-host, Aquí y Ahora.

Despite last night’s debate being strong relative to previous CNN debates, it was down from recent Democratic primary ones.

The CBS Democratic debate on Feb. 25 hauled 15.3 million total viewers. The Feb. 18 debate on NBC is the most-watched Democratic primary debate of all time. It delivered 19.7 million viewers.

Before the Feb. NBC News debate, the most-watched 2020 primary debate up to that point had been the first one of the current cycle, back in June 2019. That one delivered 18.1 million total viewers across 3 networks (NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo).

Nevertheless, ~11 million viewers is a number CNN (and Univision) powers-that-be will likely be pleased with.