The Most-Watched Presidential Debate In History Had 84 Million Viewers

The Presidential election always comes with important debates between candidates that help people decide which candidate to vote for. Presidential debates attract millions of viewers eager to know what the candidates for our head of state think about important issues. The debates are televised and moderated by media figureheads. We started having official presidential debates in 1960 and the debates have been a source of great media attention since then, occurring every four years since the induction of the tradition. However, some presidential debates have attracted more attention than others. The least viewed presidential debate still attracted 26.6 million views in total. That's a far cry from the most viewed presidential debate, though. What is the most-watched presidential debate? Let's look at which presidential debates attracted the most attention.

To populate this list, we looked at various lists of viewership for the historical presidential debates. Then, we corroborated them with reputable media analysis details, such as those from Nielsen Media Research, for the events that showed how many people viewed the debate. We utilized editorial discretion when choosing sites as different organizations have differing view counts. This is due to a myriad of factors, including whether the debate is available online. For the debates that are viewable online, some sources have tallies that include views outside of the campaign season, and, thus, have higher numbers than sources that only counted in the immediate broadcast of the debates. We tried to discern between sources with more modern view counts, including web broadcasts and video-on-demand, and those that only counted views for the immediate broadcast.

1960: Presidential candidates Richard Nixon (left), later the 37th President of the United States, and John F Kennedy, the 35th President, during a televised debate. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images)

The 10th most-viewed presidential debate is actually the first televised one ever held. In 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon engaged in the first presidential debate ever to be aired on television. It took place in the WBMM-TV Studios in Chicago, Illinois and it's estimated that 66.4 million people tuned in to watch the debate. Questions for the debate were intentionally restricted to internal and domestic questions relating to U.S. policy. Howard K. Smith moderated the debate and Charles Warren, Stuart Novins, and Bob Fleming attended as panelists.

Nixon refused to wear make-up during the debate. As a result, his facial hair stubble showed up very prominently on the black-and-white broadcast. He also began sweating under the studio lights and his light gray suit faded into the backdrop on set, appearing to match his skin tone. He blamed his poor performance in the debate on hitting his knee on a car door, which ultimately resulted in him being hospitalized with a staph infection. Reportedly, after seeing him in the debate, his mother called him asking if he was sick due to the sweating and poor performance.

The debate was held in a timed format. Candidates were given eight minutes to make their opening statements, two and a half minutes to respond to questions, an optional rebuttal following answers from the opponent, and three minutes for closing statements.

ST LOUIS, MO - OCTOBER 09: Democratic presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (L) and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump listen during the town hall debate at Washington University on October 9, 2016 in St Louis, Missouri. This is the second of three presidential debates scheduled prior to the November 8th election. (Photo by Saul Loeb-Pool/Getty Images)

The second presidential debate of the 2016 election was the eighth most-watched presidential debate in history. The event took place at the University of Washington in St. Louis, Missouri. It garnered 66.5 million views in total. Anderson Cooper of CNN and Martha Raddatz of ABC News moderated the debate, which was conducted in a "town meeting" style. The audience was made up of uncommitted voters chosen by the Gallup Organization. The Commission of Presidential Debates originally stipulated that half of the questions were to come from the public and half would come from the moderators. They consequently invited members of the public to submit and vote on questions for the debate online using the bipartisan Open Debate Coalition's website. Moderators chose their questions from the thirty most popular results from the online polls.

An additional eight questions were asked by members of the audience, including topics such as xenophobia, healthcare, and taxes. The beginning of the debate was dominated by discussions about the then-recently-leaked tapes of Trump making highly unbecoming comments about women to Billy Bush. Trump countered the argument by making allegations of sexual abuse against former president Bill Clinton, his opposing candidate's husband. During the debate, Trump vowed to send opponent Hilary Clinton to jail, which many scholars, such as law professors and political scientists, criticized as an anti-democratic impulse. According to polls taken after the debate, the majority of watchers (around 40% depending on the poll) believed Clinton to be the winner of the debate.

DENVER, CO - OCTOBER 03: Democratic presidential candidate, U.S. President Barack Obama smiles during the Presidential Debate at the University of Denver on October 3, 2012 in Denver, Colorado. The first of four debates for the 2012 Election, three Presidential and one Vice Presidential, is moderated by PBS's Jim Lehrer and focuses on domestic issues: the economy, health care, and the role of government. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Taking place at the University of Denver in Denver, Colorado, the first presidential debate of the 2012 election was the seventh most-watched presidential debate of all time. It garnered an estimated 67.2 million views. An executive editor and news anchor for PBS, Jim Lehrer, moderated the debate. According to a memorandum of understanding made public before the event, the debate did not include opening statements from the candidates, incumbent Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. The debate was intended to consist of six fifteen-minute segments with answer periods and facilitated discussion. However, due to the candidates going over their time limits in the initial segments, the latter ones were markedly shorter. Other than applause at the beginning and end of the debate, there was no audience participation in the event.

With more than 67 million viewers, the second presidential debate of the 2012 election was the most widely watched event of its nature in over 32 years at the time. Most viewers polled believed that Romeny was the clear winner of the debate. CBS found that 46% of their voters believed Romney had won. CNN found that 67% of their viewers believed Romney was the victor. Gallup found that a whopping 72% of their viewers believed that Romney had won the debate. Time Magazine's Joe Klein regarded Obama's performance at the debate as "one of the most inept performances he'd ever seen by a sitting president." Most of the critiques of Obama's performance focused on his body language, stating that he looked detached, rarely addressed his opponent directly, and was often seen looking down when Romney was speaking.

7th October 1984: An overhead view of red, white and blue balloons being dropped at a rally for the Reagan-Bush presidential campaign inside the Hyatt hotel, Louisville, Kentucky. President and Mrs Reagan look up from the stage below. (Photo by Ronald Reagan Library/Getty Images)

The second and final presidential debate in 1984 between incumbent Ronald Reagan and opponent, former Vice President Walter Mondale was the seventh most-watched presidential debate in history. The debate took place in the Music Hall in the Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City, Missouri, and garnered an estimated 67.3 million views. Edwin Newman, formerly of NBC News, moderated the debate. It featured a panel of participants from various sources, made up of Georgie Anne Geyer of the Universal Press Syndicate, Marvin Kalb of NBC News, Morton Kondracke of New Republic, and journalist Henry Trewhitt. Topics of the debate were primarily foreign policy and defense issues.

This presidential debate is notable as it was a turning point in the presidential race at the time. During the debate, Reagan brought up Mondale's age, saying, "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience." The comment was received positively with laughs from both the audience and Mondale himself. However, Mondale stated that it was at that moment that he knew he was destined to ultimately lose the election.

The sixth most-watched presidential debate in history was the 1992 second presidential debate between businessman Ross Perot, Governor Bill Clinton, and incumbent George H.W. Bush. The debate took place at the University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia. It garnered an estimated 69.9 million views in total. The town hall meeting style was chosen as the format for the debate. 109 uncommitted voters acted as the questioners for the debate. Questions mostly focused on the economy and domestic issues. However, no topic, such as foreign policy, was considered outside of the realm of the debate for the questioners should they have had questions. A poll conducted over the next several days by USA TODAY and CNN showed that 58% of the watchers had declared Clinton the winner. Only 16% of responders voted for Bush as the winner and just 15% voted for Perot.

The debate attracted attention due to then-President George H.W. Bush being seen checking his watch while being asked about how the national debt personally affected him. Many people said they felt it showed disinterest in the process, which many people deemed crucial to the presidential race.

Bush responded, "I took a huge hit. That's another thing I don't like debates, you look at your watch and they say that he hasn't any business running for president. He's bored and he's out of this thing, he's not with it and we need change. They took a little incident like that to show that I was, you know, out of it. They made a huge thing out of that. Now, was I glad when the damn thing was over? Yeah, and maybe that's why I was looking at it, only 10 more minutes of this crap, I mean. Go ahead and use it. I'm a free spirit now."

The fifth most watched presidential debate in history is the vice presidential debate between VP candidates, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. The debate was during the 2008 election and took place at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. The debate netted 70 million views in total according to Nielsen Media Research, making it the most-watched vice presidential debate in history. It was the second presidential debate in history to reach at least 70 million viewers, after the 1980 debate between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. This presidential debate took place at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. The hosting position was initially offered to Washington University in Pullman, Washington. However, the university declined to host the vice presidential debate in order to pursue hosting a presidential debate instead. American journalist, television news anchor, and author, Gwen Ifill of Public Broadcasting Service, moderated the debate.

The vice presidential debate drew a lot of attention, in part because the candidates had never met in person before the debate. It included all the same questions as the previous presidential debate but had shorter answer and discussion times following each question. Candidate Sarah Palin was accused of avoiding the debate and refusing to answer the questions posed to her. However, her supporters argued that she was speaking in simple terms to "Joe six-pack" and "hockey moms."

The fourth most watched presidential debate was the third presidential debate of 2016 between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump at the Thomas & Mack Center at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. The debate garnered a total of 71.6 million views, placing it squarely in the fourth position. Chris Wallace of FOX News was the moderator for this debate as well. It was a 90-minute debate with six sections, each of approximately 15 minutes. Wallace began each segment with a question. Then, each candidate was given 2 minutes to respond to the question followed by a facilitated discussion of the topic. Questions for the debate were at the sole discretion of the moderator in this case. Audience participation in the event was limited to applause at the beginning and end of the debate. No audience reactions were allowed during the debate's sections.

The debate was aired over 13 networks and live-streamed on YouTube. According to watch statistics, 71.6 million people watched it and the YouTube livestream peaked at 1.7 million viewers. There were over 140 million views given to debate-related videos that were not video-on-demand footage of the debate itself. This viewership is partly inspired by the viral backlash against candidate Donald Trump for use of racially charged statements like "bad hombres" and sexist statements, such as calling Clinton a "nasty woman." According to polls, 50-60% of voters believed that Clinton performed better than Trump in the debates, with only 20-30% of poll voters believing that Trump had won the debate.

The third most-watched presidential debate of all time took place in 2020 at the Health Education Campus Samson Pavilion in Cleveland, Ohio. It garnered 73.1 million views in total, placing it just behind the 1980 debate at the public music hall, also in Cleveland, Ohio. Chris Wallace, an American broadcast journalist and FOX anchor, moderated the debate. According to a book written by the former White House chief of staff in 2021, Trump tested positive for COVID-19 mere days before the debate, but attended anyway, putting thousands of people at risk. Trump denied these allegations and called them false. The debate was initially scheduled to take place at the Edmund P. Joyce Center at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. However, Notre Dame withdrew as the host in July of that year. The university cited concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic as their reasoning.

Following his history of erratic behavior, Trump made wild claims about his debate opponent, then-former-Vice-President, Joe Biden. Trump claimed that Biden was suffering from dementia and taking performance-enhancing drugs during the primaries. He also claimed that Biden would use an earpiece during the debate. Trump demanded that Biden's ears be checked before the debate. Biden laughed off the allegations of taking performance-enhancing drugs and declined to have his ears searched before the debate. This was also the debate where Donald Trump refused to agree to a peaceful transfer of power. When asked if he would commit to this, he responded "We'll have to wait and see." Fact-checkers also challenged many of the statements Trump made during the debate, such as that he "brought back college football" and "got back" Seattle from left-wing protestors.

The second most viewed presidential debate of all time is the one that took place at a Music Hall in Cleveland, Ohio leading up to the 1980 presidential election. The debate garnered 80.6 million views. This debate was between presidential candidates Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. The Independent candidate, John B. Anderson, was not invited to the event and, thus, was not present. The debate was moderated by Howard K. Smith, an American journalist, radio presenter, and political commentator who represented the ABC network at the time. The second presidential debate in 1980 was the birthplace of Ronald Reagan's iconic quote, "There you go again." Reagan used this line in a few debates over the years. He often used it to disarm his opponents and catch them off-guard. It is one of the defining phrases of the 1980 presidential election.

The second presidential debate of 1980 was eventful on all axes. The network encountered technical difficulties airing the debate. Despite the difficulties, the event went off as planned and was televised live with the responses to the questions by candidates. Although he was not invited or present, CNN attempted to include the Independent candidate, John B. Anderson, by asking him the same questions and playing a recording of his answers along with the answers from the live candidates. All candidates received the same 12 questions. They also had two instances of one minute to rebut answers from their opponents. Anderson did not receive the ability to rebut as his answers were not given live. It was the most viewed presidential debate of all time until the first 2016 presidential debate.

The presidential debate with the record for the most views is the one that took place at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York in 2016. This debate currently has over 84 million views including streams and video-on-demand. The two candidates at the debate were Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. American news anchor, Lester Holt of the NBC network, moderated the debate. Due to security and financial concerns the debate, originally scheduled to take place at Wright State University, was moved to Hofstra University.

The debate was divided into six segments, each approximately 15 minutes in length. However, both candidates struggled with time restrictions. The moderator's attempts to get the candidates to adhere to time restrictions were repeatedly ignored. The different segments covered different issues pertinent to the race, such as the federal deficit, the economy, the war on terror, and race relations. The debate also looked at the business acumen of both candidates, something that was pertinent to the 2016 election specifically.

According to most scientifically sound polls taken after the debate, the vast majority of watchers felt that Clinton was the stronger debater. A CNN/ORC poll showed that 62% believed that Clinton won the debate while only 27% believed Trump won. Public Polling Policy found that 57% believed Clinton won, and YouGov found that 51% declared Clinton the winner. Additionally, 32% of voters felt they thought better of Clinton as a candidate after the debate. Conversely, only 10% said they thought better of Trump after watching.