Fox News Wins Election Night in Cable News Ratings, While MSNBC Beats CNN For First Time in History

Fox News dominated Tuesday’s election night coverage on cable news as MSNBC followed behind them by beating CNN for the first time in history.

On Tuesday night, millions of Americans tuned in to watch President-elect Donald Trump claim victory across multiple battleground states to win the presidency. Fox was the first major cable news network to call essential states for Trump, including Pennsylvania and eventually the election as a whole.

According to Nielsen Fast National Ratings, Fox News drew in 9.7 million viewers  during their election coverage while MSNBC followed behind at 5.5 million primetime viewers from 8 to 11 p.m. ET. These ratings will eventually go up as they are based on in-home viewing and do not include out-of-home viewing.

However, CNN lost more than half of its election night audience compared to 2020, drawing 4.7 million total viewers in the primetime hour. In 2020, CNN beat MSNBC with 9.6 million viewers during election coverage.

Tuesday’s night’s cable coverage gave CNN the smallest election night audience since the 1996 presidential race. Meanwhile, MSNBC ranked third across all television, falling behind Fox News and ABC.

Although Fox was Tuesday’s big winner, their numbers are down significantly from their 2020 coverage just like CNN and MSNBC.

In 2020, Fox attracted 14 million viewers to its election coverage during primetime coverage, making it the most-watched coverage in the history of cable news.