Election night’s Democratic wins boosted MSNBC to lead the pack among its fellow cable news networks in primetime as the network secured its most-watched day and night since Election Day 2024.
MSNBC averaged 2.92 million total viewers in primetime, outpacing Fox News, which averaged 2.76 million viewers, as well as CNN, which averaged 1.68 million viewers, according to Nielsen fast national ratings, which exclude out-of-home viewing. Full numbers will be available later in the day on Wednesday, and this story will be updated accordingly.
While MSNBC scored big in primetime, it’s Fox News that led the pack in total day, with the right-leaning network scoring an average 1.97 million viewers, exceeding viewership for MSNBC, which scored 1.28 million viewers, as well as CNN, which averaged 748,000 viewers.
In the key cable news demo among adults 25-54, CNN led the networks in primetime with 513,000 viewers, outpacing MSNBC’s 461,000 demo viewers as well as Fox News’ 423,000 viewers. In total day, however Fox News brought in the most demo viewers with 236,000 viewers, while CNN scored 176,000 viewers and MSNBC averaged 168,000 viewers.
From 4 p.m. to 12 a.m., Fox News scored 2.67 million total viewers, while MSNBC averaged 2.14 million viewers and CNN averaged 1.21 million viewers. During the same time frame, Fox News led the demo as well with 354,000 viewers, while CNN averaged 326,000 demo viewers and MSNBC averaged 303,000 demo viewers.
On YouTube, Fox News averaged 10.16 million YouTube video views, according to Emplifi, while MSNBC averaged 9.44 million and CNN averaged 5.84 million. Likewise, NBC News averaged 3.91 million viewers while ABC News averaged 3.74 million views and CBS News averaged 1.72 million views.
Comprehensive viewership numbers for Tuesday’s Election Night will be available later Wednesday. Last year’s Election Night coverage for the race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump brought in 42.3 million viewers across 18 TV networks from 7:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. EST, down 25.6% from the 2020 election, whose night-of coverage for the race between Joe Biden and Trump brought in 56.92 million viewers across 21 channels.
Tuesday saw several wins for the Democratic party, including in the governors’ races in New Jersey and Virginia, as well as Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City’s mayoral election.
