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Fox News anchors  Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier.
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Fox News leads election night coverage with record audience

Fox News/TNS

Fox News leads election night coverage with record audience

Fox News was the top choice among viewers for coverage of the 2020 election as President Donald Trump and his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, were in a tight battle for 270 electoral votes.

But Nielsen data showed a lot fewer viewers turned to TV for presidential election coverage than in 2016, when Trump won the presidency in his race against Hillary Clinton.

Nielsen data showed Fox News, led by anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, averaged 13.8 million viewers, a record for cable news coverage of a presidential election, from 8-11 p.m. Tuesday.

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CNN finished second for the night (with 9.1 million viewers), followed by MSNBC (7.3 million), ABC (6.1 million), NBC (5.6 million), the Fox broadcast network (3.3 million), Fox Business (366,000) and CNBC (117,000).

Coverage also aired on WGN America, PBS, Telemundo, Univision and CNN en Espanol.

Fox News has seen its ratings surge overall in 2020, some nights topping all other networks on cable and broadcast television. For the second presidential cycle in a row, the top-three finish of Fox News, CNN and MSNBC shows how cable news has become the main destination for politically engaged viewers, taking the mantle from broadcast networks, which have long used their presidential election night coverage to showcase their news operations.

While Nielsen has yet to release a total figure on viewers who watched election coverage in prime time, the early numbers indicate it will be down significantly from the 71.4 million viewers in 2016.

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The drop is likely a reflection of the overall decline in the usage of traditional television, especially among viewers under the age of 50. Many news outlets made streaming coverage of election results available on a wide range of platforms.

The live stream of CNN’s coverage had a peak 1.1 million concurrent viewers streaming at its peak on election night over a number of digital platforms. CBSN, the digital stream of CBS News, had 19.5 million unique visitors on Election Day, a new record for the service.

The TV number also may have dropped as it became apparent that no winner was going to be declared on Tuesday night. Votes were still being counted Wednesday and Thursday in a number of battleground states, with Biden holding a lead in electoral votes.

First Published: November 5, 2020, 4:22 p.m.

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