Kamala Harris’ recent CNN town hall racked up strong ratings just ahead of the 2024 election, attracting 3.33 million viewers according to Nielsen live-plus-same-day data.
In the anticipated town hall, Harris sat down with Anderson Cooper to discuss critical election issues. The event, which aired at 9 p.m. ET and lasted approximately 71 minutes, also drew 744,000 viewers in the key cable demographic of adults aged 25-54.
The CNN town hall became the most-watched cable program of the night in total viewership and ranked second in the key demo, surpassed only by the NBA on ESPN.
Get this, Harris’ appearance on CNN slightly outperformed Donald Trump’s women’s issues town hall from the previous week, which pulled in 3.1 million viewers on Fox News, though Trump’s event aired earlier in the day at 11 a.m. ET. Moreover, the CNN town hall tripled the 1.04 million viewers who watched Harris’ Univision town hall earlier this month.
However, Harris’ town hall on CNN was nearly doubled in viewership by her Fox News interview on Special Report With Bret Baier, which drew in 7.8 million viewers just over a week ago. But that makes perfect sense. She went on Fox News, duh.
Anyway, the CNN event propelled the network to become the most-watched cable news channel during the time slot, surpassing both Fox News, which had 3.23 million total viewers and 423,000 in the demo, and MSNBC, which attracted 1.33 million total viewers and 155,000 in the demo.
Check this out, in terms of the key 25-54 demographic, Harris’ town hall on CNN surpassed any other candidate town hall in 2024. It topped the numbers for Trump’s Fox News town halls, which had 576,000 demo viewers in January, 358,000 in February, and 440,000 in early October.
As the event streamed live on Max and CNN.com, CNN’s digital platform recorded nearly half a million live starts throughout the day on Wednesday.