The long-awaited numbers are in: 12.8 million tuned in on Wednesday to watch the Fox-hosted first Republican presidential primary debate, according to Nielsen ratings.
Former President Trump’s pre-taped interview with Tucker Carlson doesn’t seem to have put much of a dent in the ratings itself. It had drawn well over 200 million “views,” as of Friday, but that’s a meaningless statistic due to how liberal Twitter counts “views.” Anyone logged into X counts as a “view”.
However, Trump’s absence was surely felt: 12.8 million is well short of the utterly historic 24 million who watched the opening GOP debate in 2015, with Trump being the main attraction.
This most recent debate also came up short of levels for the Democratic opening primary debate in 2019 and both the Republican and Democratic primary debates in 2015.
Still, Fox has boasted that Fox News Digital had a “record day” in engagement and had its best viewing numbers of the year. The debate, moderated by Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, drew in 2.8 million viewers in the sacrosanct 25- to 54-year-old demographic.
With Trump still leading the polls and his future on the stage uncertain, it seems this may be the peak debate viewership for the primary. Subsequent primary debates tend to decline in viewership, barring anything particularly newsworthy.
