Vance-Walz VP Debate on Track for 40M+ Viewers

The lone debate between the two major-party candidates for vice president in 2024 drew a big audience — but not nearly as large as four years ago.

Final Nielsen ratings for Tuesday’s face-off between Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president, and Republican nominee Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, put the debate at 43.15 million viewers across 15 networks. More than 90 percent of those viewers — 40.25 million — watched on the big four broadcast networks and three largest cable news outlets (CNN, Fox News and MSNBC). Preliminary figures had those seven outlets totaling 38.62 million viewers.

The ratings for Tuesday’s telecast are a little below the historical average for VP debates — and down by 25.5 percent from the 57.92 million people who watched the 2020 debate between sitting Vice President Mike Pence and then-Sen. Kamala Harris (who is leading the Democratic ticket this year).

Prior to Tuesday, the 11 vice presidential debates from 1976-2020 averaged about 46.5 million viewers (no VP debate took place in 1980).

CBS News produced the debate, which was moderated by Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan, and the network had the largest audience of any individual outlet with 9.57 million viewers, based on preliminary numbers. Fox News placed second with 7.93 million viewers, followed by ABC (6.35 million), NBC (5.67 million), MSNBC (4.88 million), CNN (3.37 million) and the Fox broadcast network (2.48 million). Fox Business added 276,000 more viewers; the remainder of the audience was spread among Merit Street Media, Scripps News, CNNe, NBC Universo, Newsmax, NewsNation and PBS.

Past VP debates have ranged from a high of 69.9 million viewers in 2008 (Joe Biden and Sarah Palin) to a low of 26.6 million in 1996 (Al Gore and Jack Kemp). Since 1976, their average audience is about 25 percent smaller than those for presidential debates.

The two presidential debates this year have averaged about 59.2 million viewers — 51.27 million for Biden and Donald Trump in June, before Biden ended his re-election campaign, and 67.14 million for Harris and Trump in September.

Oct. 2, 1:57 p.m. Updated with final audience totals.

Oct. 2, 2:17 p.m. Updated with final averages for individual networks.