The first presidential debate of 2020 between Democratic nominee Joe Biden and President Donald Trump drew just two-thirds of the network viewers of the first 2016 debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, early rating show according to Deadline.
Just 27.3 million people tuned in to the broadcast networks–ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC–to view the widely-criticized debate. That’s a 36% drop from the first Clinton-Trump debate of 2016.
Although cable network, streaming and delayed viewing are not calculated in this ratings report, experts don’t believe those platforms will put this debate over the 84 million people who watched the first Clinton-Trump debate on all platforms in 2016.
The ratings are based on the number of people who tuned into the networks at given times during the broadcast, typically within the first ten minutes. There is no definitive way to tell who may have tuned in to the start of the debate but became so disgusted they changed to another program.