Fox News cruised to an easy victory in the ratings battle for election night coverage, marking the second-straight time the network beat rivals CNN and MSNBC in viewership for presidential results.
Fox News reeled in 10.3 million viewers from 8 to 11 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, according to Nielsen data.
The ratings were more than double that of CNN, which finished behind MSNBC for the first time on a presidential election night.
MSNBC’s coverage, anchored by Rachel Maddow, averaged 6 million viewers, besting CNN’s 5.1 million viewers.
Warner Bros. Discovery-owned CNN lost nearly half of the 9.6 million people who watched during the 2020 presidential election.
At Fox News, the coverage, which was anchored by Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, slipped slightly from its record 13.8 million viewers in 2020.
MSNBC was down from 7.3 million in 2020.
Of the broadcast networks, ABC had 5.7 million viewers on Tuesday, NBC had 5.3 million and CBS had 3.5 million, Nielsen said.
Overall, TV viewership of former President Trump’s win over Vice President Kamala Harris, was sharply down over the last presidential election cycle.
Nielsen said 42.3 million viewers tuned into election coverage across 18 networks measured, dropping 25% from 2020. During that cycle, the outcome wasn’t called for days. Democrat Joe Biden eventually was declared the victor over then-incumbent Trump.
This time around, Trump was declared the winner early Wednesday by most outlets.
The declines in viewership are due to the audience’s move from watching traditional TV, especially among viewers under the age of 50, who get their news by streaming it or on social media.
On the streaming front, Fox News said its digital sites had 47.2 million views between 6 p.m. and 3 a.m. ET.
MSNBC’s YouTube channel had its strongest day on record with 30 million video views, the company said.
MSNBC said its “Kornacki-Cam,” which provided a continuous look at journalist Steve Kornacki’s analysis of the vote, had more than 9 million video starts on YouTube.
