More than 80 million people tuned in to see Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump face off, setting a new record in the sixty year history of televised presidential debates.
The final numbers are still being tallied by Nielsen. But the debate averaged a total of 80.9 million viewers across 12 of the channels that carried it live.
Nielsen traditionally measures viewers who watch via traditional TV at home. That means people who watched the debate at parties, bars, restaurants, and offices were not counted.
Nor does the 80.9 million viewer total include PBS and C-SPAN. Ratings for PBS will be available later Tuesday.
Many millions also watched the debate via the Internet.
Various live streams on YouTube together registered more than 2.5 million simultaneous viewers. Live streams on other sites also reached millions of people.
This means the actual total audience is significantly higher than 80 million.
If online viewers were to be included in this number, it can be reasonably said that at least 1/3 of the U.S. Population watched last night’s debate.
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#ShesReady and it shows.
And no, Donald, you did not win.
Even Trump’s Alt-Right base admitted he lost:
Debate Highlights
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The next debate will be in just 12 days and will a Townhall format. This format should be to Hillary’s advantage given Trump’s impulse control issues including his incessant interrupting.
Second presidential debate (October 9, 2016, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO)
The second presidential debate will take the form of a town meeting, in which half of the questions will be posed directly by citizen participants and the other half will be posed by the moderator based on topics of broad public interest as reflected in social media and other sources. The candidates will have two minutes to respond and there will be an additional minute for the moderator to facilitate further discussion. The town meeting participants will be uncommitted voters selected by the Gallup Organization.