Almost 58 million people checked out catch Wednesday night’s showdown between Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris — making it the second most-watched VP debate in TV-history, as per Nielsen.
An expected 57.9 audience members viewed the solitary 2020 vice presidential debate, effectively outperforming the 2016 matchup among Pence and Sen. Tim Kaine, which drew exactly 37 million sets of eyes.
That makes the current year’s matchup second just to the 2008 debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, which was viewed by almost 70 million people.
In third place is the 1984 contest between George H.W. Bush and Geraldine Ferraro, the first female vice presidential nominee representing a major political party in America.
This means that since VP debates started in 1976, the top three most-watched featured a woman on stage, according to Nielsen.
The count doesn’t include those who streamed the debate on TV screens or who only watched on a digital device.
Generally, vice presidential debates draw fewer viewers than presidential ones, such as last week’s face-off between Biden and President Trump, which netted more than 73 million viewers.
It’s unclear whether the two candidates will meet on the debate stage again, since Trump said on Thursday that he wouldn’t participate in their scheduled Oct. 15 matchup, after organizers said it would be held virtually.
