Election night television viewership drops sharply from 2020 and 2016

AP Media Writer

The idea of watching election night returns on television wasn’t as appealing as it used to be. The Nielsen company said that 42.3 million people watched returns come in Tuesday, at least through 11 p.m., on 18 different networks. That’s a sharp decline from the 56.9 million who watched in 2020, and the 71.4 million who saw Donald Trump’s first victory in 2016. Television viewership has been declining in general over the last several years, so it’s hard to tell whether those numbers mean there was less interest in the campaign, or if people were getting their news another way.