TV Ratings: Blue Wave Fuels Surge in Midterm Election Night Viewing, NBC Leads Primetime
A dominant showing by Democrats in the 2026 midterms also resulted in — at least for one night — a realignment in viewing of election night news coverage.
Final same-day ratings from Nielsen show NBC leading primetime Tuesday night. That’s a big change from the 2022 midterms, when NBC finished fourth among the six most watched news outlets. NBC also claimed the most watched live stream of election night with its “Kornacki Cam,” focused solely on data analyst and video board operator Steve Kornacki.
With the ratings victory Tuesday, NBC is the first broadcast network to lead a federal election night in total viewers since the 2012 presidential election (also topped by NBC). Election coverage across outlets was way up compared to 2022, but it fell short of the historically high levels of the 2018 midterms.
NBC averaged 6.74 million viewers in primetime, including out of home viewing and Nielsen’s big data component. ABC finished second with 5.19 million viewers. The three largest cable news channels were pretty closely bunched, with Fox News (4.32 million) narrowly leading CNN (4.15 million) and MS NOW (3.75 million). That’s a change from preliminary numbers that showed MS NOW with a small lead. CBS is further back at 2.76 million viewers.
All told, primetime election coverage averaged 31.21 million viewers across 13 broadcast and cable outlets (the others were Telemundo, Univision, PBS, CNN en Espanol, Fox Business, Newsmax and NewsNation). That’s up about 23 precent from 25.43 million across 12 networks for the 2022 midterms. The 2018 average was 36.11 million, the highest this century.
Five of the top six networks improved on their performance from the 2022 midterms. NBC more than doubled its audience of 3.11 million viewers, and CNN (up 59 percent) and ABC (up 57 percent) also posted big gains. MS NOW grew by 17 percent, and CBS ticked up 8 percent. The exception was Fox News, which took a big fall: It was down 42 percent from 2022.
NBC also had a sizable lead in the core TV news ad demographic of adults 25-54 in primetime, averaging 2.79 million in primetime. ABC (1.67 million) and CNN (1.51 million) followed. CBS (798,000) edged Fox News (771,000), and MS NOW drew 665,000 adults 25-54.
Univision delivered 1.54 million total viewers and 554,000 adults 25-54, beating out Spanish-language rival Telemundo (1.06 million and 430,000). Newsmax averaged 576,000 primetime viewers to 346,000 on Fox Business and 232,000 on NewsNation. PBS and CNN en Espanol accounted for the remaining 550,000 or so viewers.
Fox News also held a small lead for the full 24 hours of election day, averaging 1.92 million viewers to 1.66 million for MS NOW and 1.55 million for CNN. In the 25-54 demo, CNN had the edge with 480,000 viewers for the whole day. Fox (275,000) and MS NOW (274,000) were in a near-dead heat.
The live stream of the Kornacki Cam generated 29 million views across all platforms, NBC News says, including 6.1 million on YouTube. It peaked there with some 300,000 concurrent streams between 8:30 and 11:30 p.m. ET.
Nov. 4, 1 p.m. Updated with out of home ratings from Nielsen.
Nov. 5, 10:35 a.m. Updated with expanded election night ratings for cable news.
Nov. 5, 2:55 p.m. Updated throughout with final same-day ratings.
