In the battle for news supremacy covering the U.S. mid-term elections Tuesday night, NBC News was the clear winner, with 6.8 million viewers during its primetime broadcasts, according to Nielsen.
ABC News was the runner up, averaging 5.12 million. MS NOW drew 4.19 million, CNN had 4.17 million average viewers, Fox News had 4.08 million and CBS News drew 2.73 million average.
Overall viewership among the six networks was an estimated 27 million, up 6.3% compared to the 2022 midterms, which drew about 25.4 million.
Here were the averages among the coveted 25-54 demo:
- NBC, 2.93 million
- ABC, 1.71 million
- CNN, 1.56 million
- Fox News, 817,000
- MS NOW, 776,000
- CBS, 771,000
- Univision, 591,000
- Telemundo, 388,000 for Telemundo
- Fox Business Network, 79,000
- Newsmax, 68,000
- NewsNation, 51,000
Data wiz Steve Kornacki was NBC News’ star of the evening, with the "Kornacki Cam" ranked No. 1 among election livestreams on YouTube, garnering a record 29 million views across platforms, including 6.1 million on YouTube, NBC said.
Kornacki lasted about 10 hours on the network, retiring around 3:26 am on Wednesday morning. Later he updated his fans with this tweet:
I was sure 13 hours would be fine but things caught up to me in a hurry at hour 10. I can’t say thanks enough to all of you. What a ride and I think we did make livestream history. Sorry for the abrupt ending!November 4, 2026
Fox News Channel—which led coverage with 7.4 million total viewers in primetime during the 2022 Midterms—has gone through a ratings slump in recent months, reporting a 27% decline year over year in its latest quarter. Earlier this week, Lachlan Murdoch, president of News Corp. attributed the dip to “viewer fatigue.”
