Early numbers for Donald Trump’s State of the Union are in, with Fox News leading the charge among the cable news networks while ABC News topped the broadcast channels.
Fox News’ coverage of the 2026 State of the Union address, which aired from 9:12-11:00 p.m. ET on Tuesday, brought in 9.1 million viewers, based on preliminarily Nielsen live-plus-same-day panel data. Likewise, MS NOW scored 2.4 million viewers and CNN brought in 2.2 million viewers.
On the broadcast side, ABC News led the broadcast news networks with 5.1 million viewers, with NBC landing as the closest competitor with 3.6 million viewers. Meanwhile, CBS brought in a viewership of 3.3 million while the Fox broadcast network (not Fox News) scored 2.1 million viewers. Additionally, Fox Business News brought in 269,000 viewers.
With the numbers available thus far, the address is totaling around 28 million viewers, though that is not comprehensive of every where the State of the Union was broadcast. Comprehensive figures from Nielsen’s big data plus panel will be available on Thursday, and this story will be updated once available.
While Tuesday’s address marks the first State of the Union Trump has given this presidency, it can be compared to last year’s congressional address, which lasted roughly an hour and 4o minutes and was broadcast across 15 networks. That address scored 36.6 million viewers and peaked at 37.9 million viewers, per Nielsen.
For comparison, 32.2 million viewers tuned in to watch former president Joe Biden’s State of the Union address in 2024. Trump’s 2017, 2019 and 2020 addresses brought in 47.74 million, 45.6 million and 46.79 million viewers, respectively, per Nielsen.
Trump’s State of the Union, which set the record as the longest spoken State of the Union address in modern history, saw the president tout the economy and border control, saying the U.S. had “the strongest and most secure border in American history.”
Ahead of Trump’s address, Democrats and progressive media organizations organized counter-programming to the SOTU, including Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger delivering the official Democratic response to Trump’s speech.
