Dem Debate Draws Record 15.3 Million Viewers

Teabagistan is celebrating CNN’s ratings for last night’s debate because 24 million tuned in last month to hear Donald Trump call people ugly. But CNN did set an all-time viewership record for any Democratic debate. Variety reports:

In preliminary estimates from Nielsen, Tuesday’s debate on CNN drew a big 15.3 million viewers — the largest-ever crowd for a Democratic debate and the sixth largest non-sports cable audience on record. Prior to last night, the highest-rated Democratic presidential primary debate on cable was CNN’s January 2008 Los Angeles debate, which averaged 8.3 million viewers. And overall, the highest-rated was ABC’s 2008 Philadelphia debate, which drew 10.7 million viewers in April of that year.

In the key news demo of adults 25-54, Tuesday night’s debate averaged 4.8 million viewers — also a record for a Democratic debate. CNN live-streamed the debate to CNN.com, its mobile apps and Apple TV, setting an all-time record for peak concurrent streams of a live news event. At 10:20 p.m. ET, usage peaked at 980,000 concurrent streams, topping the 921,000 peak concurrent streams CNN saw of its GOP debate at Reagan Library last month. By comparison, it’s estimates that NBC pulled in 1.3 million peak concurrent streams at the Super Bowl earlier this year.

Perhaps the most interesting stat is that the GOP debates averaged about 5.3 million adults 25-54, which is quite close to the number in that demo that watched last night.