Audience rises to 63.2 million for Obama-McCain 2
An audience of 63.2 million viewers saw Tuesday night's presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain -- and increase of almost 10 million over the 52.4 million who saw the first debate on Sept. 26.
By way of comparison, 46.7 million viewers tuned in for President George W. Bush and John Kerry’s second debate on Oct. 8, 2004.
While the audience for Tuesday's debate fell short of the 69.989 who saw last week's vice presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, it is still the 10th largest audience for a political debate since Nielsen started counting viewers in 1976.
And once again, Baltimore was one of the cities with the highest percentage of viewers -- finishing third nationally just as it did for the first debate. (The Baltimore TV market ranked first in percentage of viewers for the vice presidential debate.)
Baltimore earned a rating of 55.6 rating, which means more than one out of every two TV households in the market was tuned to the debate. The Nashville market, where the debate was held, had the largest household rating at 59.2.
Outside of the cities where the debates have been held, the one constant among several of the Top 10 cities in percentages of viewers is the size of the African-American population. TV markets with large percentages of African-American viewers have tended to have high ratings for the debates.
Some analysts attribute that pattern to Obama's candidacy engaging more black viewers in debate watching during this election.
For the third straight time, ABC was the most watched among more than a dozen networks and channels with 13.2 million viewers. ABC's growing dominance in political event coverage is a trend to watch.
