Fox News will host its third Republican presidential primary debate on Thursday, March 3 from Detroit. The 2-hour debate will air live at 9 p.m. ET. Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace will return as moderators.
The debate will take place two days after Super Tuesday, which will likely narrow the GOP field for the debate. It comes ahead of primaries in Michigan on March 8 and Florida and Ohio on March 15. There is not planned to be a so-called Happy Hour debate of lower-tier candidates.
This will be the 11th GOP debate of this cycle. Four years ago, the GOP debates had wrapped up by Feb. 22, 2012, with a total of 20.
FNC’s previous Republican primary debates of this cycle were the two most-watched telecasts in the network’s history: the Aug. 6 debate (with Donald Trump) and the Jan. 28 debate (without Trump).
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 | 2,580,000 |
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 | 1,165,000 |
Jan. 17 | Dem | NBC | 10,200,000 | 3,170,000 | 1,200,000 |
Jan. 28 | GOP | Fox News | 12,466,000 | 3,467,000 | 708,724 |
Feb. 4 | Dem | MSNBC | TBD | TBD | TBD |
Feb. 6 | GOP | ABC | TBD | TBD | TBD |
Feb. 11 | Dem | PBS | TBD | TBD | TBD |
Feb. 13 | GOP | CBS | TBD | TBD | TBD |
Feb. 26 | GOP | CNN | TBD | TBD | TBD |
Mar. 3 | GOP | Fox News | 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.