Last Democratic Debate Had The Largest Audience

(This photo of the Las Vegas Democratic debate is from NBCnews.com.)

Since the June debate of Democratic candidates, the audience for those debates had been shrinking. That changed last Wednesday night with the debate in Las Vegas. Is it because many voters still haven't made up their minds, and the Nevada, South Carolina, and Super Tuesday primaries are coming up fast (with many Super Tuesday states already doing some early voting)? Maybe.

Whatever the reason, the debate in Las Vegas had the highest viewership of any of the Democratic debates this season (and maybe for any Democratic debate ever).

Here is how The Hollywood Reporter reported it:

The ninth debate of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary — and the first featuring former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg — delivered record viewership for a Democratic debate.

Nearly 20 million people watched the debate on NBC and MSNBC on Wednesday night. The 19.66 million viewers for the two-hour telecast breaks the previous Democratic primary record of 18.1 million by a sizable margin. The previous mark was set in June 2019 for night two of the first Democratic debate, carried by NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo. 

The debate also averaged 417,000 streaming viewers, bringing the total average audience just above 20 million. 

The broadcast also brought in 5.31 million viewers in the key news demographic of adults 25-54 — just ahead of the 5.3 million for the June debate — and 4.26 million in the 18-49 demo across the two networks. NBC had slightly more than 12 million viewers, while MSNBC's audience of 7.61 million was its third-largest ever behind a 2010 Olympic hockey game (8.2 million) and a 2008 Democratic primary debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (7.7 million).

The record audience for a primary debate for either major party remains 24 million viewers on Fox News for the first Republican debate of the 2016 cycle.