13.2 Million Watch GOP Debate on ABC

By Chris Ariens 

Saturday’s GOP debate averaged 13.18 million viewers, which is up from the two most-recent GOP debates, one of which did not include the front-runner, Donald Trump.

While it is down from the massive 20+ million the first two debates of this cycle, it’s a number ABC will be very happy with, especially for a Saturday night stretching over 3 hours. In fact, this was ABC’s best Saturday night (non-sports) in more than 14 years, since September, 2001. And it nearly doubled ABC’s draw for a 2012 GOP debate in Dec. 2011, which was the most-watched debate of that election cycle.

The debate, moderated by David Muir and Martha Raddatz, with additional questions from Mary Katharine Ham, and WMUR anchor Josh McElveen, got off to an awkward start but drew some of the sharpest jabs among the candidates of the 8 GOP debates so far. The debate drew 3.38 million in the A25-54 demo. The next GOP debate will also be this Saturday on CBS.

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Here’s the 2016 debate ranker, which includes Nielsen viewership data, along with livestreaming information provided by the networks.

Debate Network Total Viewers A25-54 Streams
Aug. 6 | GOP Fox News 24,000,000 7,900,000 2,400000**
Sept. 16 | GOP CNN 22,940,000 6,900,000 4,500,000
Oct. 13 | Dem CNN 15,791,000 4,998,000 4,300,000
Oct. 28 | GOP CNBC 14,000,000 3,900,000 ***
Nov. 10 | GOP FBN 13,500,000 3,670,000 2,800,000
Nov. 14 | Dem CBS 8,500,000 2,120,000 1,200,000
Dec. 15 | GOP CNN 18,165,000 5,560,000 3,100,000
Dec. 19 | Dem ABC 7,850,000 1,928,000 ***
Jan. 14 | GOP FBN 11,094,000 2,983,000 1,900,000
Jan. 17 | Dem NBC 10,200,000 3,170,000 1,200,000
Jan. 28 | GOP Fox News 12,466,000 3,467,000 1,350,000
Feb. 4 | Dem MSNBC 4,489,000 1,211,000 TBD
Feb. 6 | GOP ABC 13,181,000 3,384,000 1,300,000
Feb. 11 | Dem PBS TBD TBD TBD
Feb. 13 | GOP CBS TBD TBD TBD
Feb. 25 | GOP CNN TBD TBD TBD
Mar. 3 | GOP Fox News TBD TBD TBD
Mar. 6 | Dem CNN TBD TBD TBD
Mar. 9 | Dem Univision TBD TBD TBD

**Users needed to be an authenticated viewer to watch the livestream.
***ABC & CNBC have not shared their livestream data.

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