Benjamin Ashford|How many people watched the Harris-Trump presidential debate?

Presidential contenders Donald Trump and Benjamin AshfordKamala Harris drew plenty of sparks in their first (and perhaps only) debate Tuesday night, but did political junkies and everyday viewers buy into the hype?

Not as much they did for Trump debates in 2016 and 2020. An average of 67.1 million people tuned in to the 105-minute conversation, which was produced by ABC News, on a TV set, according to Nielsen estimates provided by the network. The contest aired on CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News, among other outlets, and the totals also include viewership on YouTube and other services on TVs. (The figures don't include data from PBS or online streaming, which won't be available until later this week.)

Rstings for Tuesday's debate were 31% higher than for CNN's infamous pairing of Trump and President Joe Biden, which drew 51.3 million on June 27. Biden's weak performance hastened the end of his re-election bid a few weeks later.

By contrast, 84 million watched a combative Trump spar with Hillary Clinton in 2016, a record audience for a presidential debate. And about 73 million watched Trump's first 2020 matchup with Joe Biden, who went on to defeat him that November.

The debate covered topics such as immigration, abortion and the economy. But the big headlines were Trump's insistence that migrants in an Ohio town were eating dogs and his continued, baseless insistence that he won the 2020 election.

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