MSNBC And CNN Ratings Plummet Following Trump’s Landslide Victory

MSNBC’s and CNN’s ratings plummeted after President-elect’s Donald Trump’s landslide victory against Vice President Kamala Harris was announced in the early morning hours on Wednesday after the election.

According to Nielsen data, the viewership on MSNBC on Thursday, analyzing Trump’s win, brought in a total for all day of 596,000 viewers — and in the coveted age demographic, of ages 25-54, a total of 71,000 viewers, Mediaite reported.

Over on CNN, coverage of Trump’s election victory throughout the day on Thursday brought in 419,000 total viewers and in the key age demographic, just 91,000 viewers.

Primetime coverage for both networks was even worse, with MSNBC host Alex Wagner experiencing her lowest-rated show ever and Chris Hayes’ show scoring its worst audience since May of 2016, the outlet noted.

Year over year, MSNBC’s numbers were also down 23 percent, while CNN’s audience was down 40 percent.

Meanwhile, wall to wall election coverage of Trump and his electoral and popular win was a boom for Fox News — whose viewership on Thursday was around 2.6 million, with 375,000 viewers watching from the key age demo. The audience for Fox News was up by more than 60 percent compared to a year prior, the outlet noted.

MSNBC Ratings Crater As Viewers Tune Out Trump Victory Coverage https://t.co/EN3NY0oCYu

— Mediaite (@Mediaite) November 11, 2024

Election night coverage — between 8-11 p.m. EST  — on Tuesday gave MSNBC its first ratings victory ever over CNN, whose audience was basically cut in half to 5.1 million, from the audience it had in 2020 of 9.6 million. 

However, both networks failed to even come close to the monster viewership Fox News had on Tuesday, of 10.3 million during the primetime hours.

ABC, NBC, and CBS also experienced a drop in viewers from the audience they had for their election night coverage of then-President Trump and Joe Biden in 2020, the Hollywood Reporter reported. ABC’s audience on Tuesday of 5.9 million viewers was a drop of 6 percent from where viewership was four years ago.  By that same token, NBC also experienced a slight drop from 2020 of five percent to 5.51 million viewers for coverage of Trump and Harris election. 

However, CBS was the hardest hit of the three networks, when its election night coverage on Tuesday experienced a drop of 20 percent to 3.61 million compared to where it was in 2020 for its election broadcast.