How many Americans watched the presidential debate between Biden and Trump?

The highly anticipated first debate between the Democratic and Republican presumptive presidential nominees took place on Thursday. It was the first face-to-face dustup between the incumbent, President Joe Biden, and his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, since they last met on a debate stage in October 2020.

The 90-minute event was hosted by CNN in a studio at the network’s Atlanta, Georgia headquarters. Leading up to the first presidential debate of 2024 between Biden and Trump, 6 out of 10 American adults said they planned to watch.

That would have meant the highest share of the public watching since Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter faced off in 1980 and the largest number of viewers ever. But how many actually tuned in?

How many Americans watched the presidential debate between Biden and Trump?

Despite the polling where large numbers said they were “extremely” or “very” likely to watch the debate live or in clips it wasn’t as much of a draw as expected. In the end the initial viewership numbers from Nielsen were lackluster with only around 51.3 million people tuning in to the live broadcast of the debate. Full viewership data will be available within a day or two.

Looking back at historical data from Nielsen, a media research company that tracks audience data, the first presidential debate of the cycle typically attracts the largest viewership. However, this year was atypical as the debates are organized by the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates and scheduled to begin in September after the candidates have been formally nominated.

President Biden’s campaign said in May that they would not be participating in that format but instead wanted the networks to organize the debates. This resulted in CNN and ABC scooping the two debates that will be held this year. The second of 2024 is scheduled for 10 September.

This was a bit of a throwback to the debates that took place between 1960 and 1988, when the commission took over, of networks organizing the events and holding them in studios without live audiences. The first debates held in 1960 saw roughly 60% of the nation tune in for each one.

There were no televised debates for the next three election cycles but they returned in 1976 between Gerald Ford and Carter. Nearly 54% of the population tuned in for the first debate but viewership tapered off successively for the next two. Almost 60% of Americans, 80.6 million, sat in front of a TV to watch the second debate between Reagan and Carter in 1980.

While the percentage of the population that watched the first debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was almost 48%, that 2016 event drew the most viewers in absolute numbers with 84 million pairs of eyeballs watching. The first debate of 2020 between Biden and Trump drew 73.1 million viewers making it the third most-watched debate in history.