Sen. Bernie Sanders has accepted Fox News’s invitation to a democratic debate. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, however, has not. Still, Fox is moving ahead with plans.
“Fox News has suggested several debate venues in California to the Democratic National Committee and both candidates,” said Bill Sammon, VP and Washington Managing Editor. “We are also offering a variety of dates, being careful to exclude Friday and Saturday nights, per the agreement between the DNC and candidates. Fox will release further debate details as appropriate, given that only one of the two candidates has accepted our debate invitation so far.”
There have been 8 democratic debates so far this cycle. In the 2008 cycle, 16 democratic debates were held, the final one occurring April 16 on ABC as Barack Obama debated Hillary Clinton.
Here’s the 2016 debate ranker, which includes Nielsen viewership data, along with concurrent livestreaming information provided by the networks.
| Debate | Network | Total Viewers | A25-54 | Concurrent Streams |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug. 6 | GOP | Fox News | 24,000,000 | 7,900,000 | 2,400,000** |
| Sept. 16 | GOP | CNN | 22,940,000 | 6,900,000 | 921,000 |
| Oct. 13 | Dem | CNN | 15,791,000 | 4,998,000 | 980,000 |
| Oct. 28 | GOP | CNBC | 14,000,000 | 3,900,000 | *** |
| Nov. 10 | GOP | FBN | 13,500,000 | 3,670,000 | *** |
| Nov. 14 | Dem | CBS | 8,500,000 | 2,120,000 | *** |
| Dec. 15 | GOP | CNN | 18,165,000 | 5,560,000 | 815,000 |
| Dec. 19 | Dem | ABC | 7,850,000 | 1,928,000 | *** |
| Jan. 14 | GOP | FBN | 11,094,000 | 2,983,000 | xxx,000 |
| Jan. 17 | Dem | NBC | 10,200,000 | 3,170,000 | *** |
| Jan. 28 | GOP | Fox News | 12,466,000 | 3,467,000 | 1,350,000 |
| Feb. 4 | Dem | MSNBC | 4,489,000 | 1,211,000 | *** |
| Feb. 6 | GOP | ABC | 13,181,000 | 3,384,000 | *** |
| Feb. 11 | Dem | PBS/CNN | 8,030,000 | 2,300,000 | *** |
| Feb. 13 | GOP | CBS | 13,510,000 | 3,520,000 | TBD |
| Feb. 25 | GOP | Telemundo/CNN | 14,521,000 | 4,684,000 | 700,000 |
| Mar. 3 | GOP | Fox News | 16,852,000 | 5,462,000 | 1,490,000 |
| Mar. 6 | Dem | CNN | 5,500,000 | 1,788,000 | TBD |
| Mar. 9 | Dem | Univision/CNN | 5,948,000 | 2,309,000 | TBD |
| Mar. 10 | GOP | CNN | 11,854,000 | 3,673,000 | 623,000 |
**Users needed to be an authenticated viewer to watch the livestream.
***Concurrent livestream data has not available.