The Democratic presidential debate on CNN Tuesday drew 15.3 million total viewers, according to Nielsen Fast National ratings.
That was down considerably from the Republican presidential debate, which scored 22.939 million viewers. The Republican debate on Fox News Channel in August pulled in 24 million viewers, the biggest non-sports number for cable.
CNN’s coverage Tuesday ranked as the sixth highest non-sports cable telecast.
The debate, moderated by Anderson Cooper, averaged 4.8 million viewers in the 25-54 demo, a best-ever for a Democratic debate.
Prior to Tuesday’s debate, ABC’s 2008 Philadelphia debate (10.7 million viewers) and CNN’s 2008 Los Angeles debate (8.3 million) were the highest rated Democratic presidential primary debates.
The live stream—from CNN.com, mobile apps and Apple TV—set the record for peak concurrent streams of a live news event with 980,000 at 10:20 p.m. That beat out CNN's GOP debate coverage.
