Hello and welcome to On Politics. We asked my colleague Michael Grynbaum, who covers media at The New York Times, to answer the big question: How many people will tune in to Thursday's debate? Then we share an exclusive poll about the issues that might be discussed, and hear from our friends at The Run-Up. — Jess Bidgood
In September 2016, anticipation was so high for the first televised showdown between former President Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that I described it as “the Super Bowl of politics.” Magazine editors in Paris for Fashion Week planned to wake up at 3 a.m. local time to watch the match. Live screenings were sold out in movie theaters in Texas. Residents of Nantucket, Massachusetts, showed so much interest in a debate viewing party at the local Dreamland Theater that police officers were hired to provide crowd control.
Ultimately, the debate was watched by a record-breaking 84 million people.
I reached out to Dreamland on Monday to see if they were planning a re-screening for Thursday's debate between President Trump and President Biden.
“Interest has waned significantly since then,” a theater employee said in an email, adding that while he's keeping the possibility of future screenings open, the theater will instead be screening summer blockbusters this Thursday.
Thursday's primetime showdown is likely to capture the nation's attention for at least 90 minutes. For the first time in decades, a single network, CNN, will host the debate and it will be simulcast on nearly all major channels and numerous news sites. A poll this month found that 65% of registered voters plan to watch all or most of the debate.
But if Dreamland is any indication, the event may not garner the same viewership as past debates: TV news industry forecasters expect Thursday's numbers to be between 30 million and 70 million — a wide range, but still lower than the Clinton-Trump showdown, even if it ends up being the most-watched event of the campaign.
Distracted attention
In a fractured and confusing media age, people still tune in in droves to watch presidential debates, but there are several factors working against Thursday's debate.
The debates are being held much earlier than usual, while many Americans are on summer vacation or taking advantage of the longer days of daylight to get out at night, and ratings experts at Nielsen say overall TV viewership is higher in September and October, when the debates traditionally take place, than it is in June. (The second debate is scheduled for Sept. 10.)
The rise of streaming services and the collapse of cable TV mean that our collective attention is more fragmented than ever: This year's Academy Awards were watched by 19.5 million people, fewer than the attendance for an NFL regular-season game.
Another challenge is the anxiety many Americans feel about the race, which has caused TV networks (and news organizations) to lose the usual “hype” they get in election years.
“Voters are not happy with this election,” The Times' in-house pollster Nate Cohn said earlier this year. A late February survey by The Times and Siena College found that voters felt “frustrated,” “anxious” and “frightened” and were unhappy with their candidate choices.
Judging by the recent Republican primaries, interest in the current race is lower than previous ones. The first Republican primary last August had 12.8 million viewers, the second 9.5 million. Since then, viewership has plummeted, dropping to 7.5 million in November, 4.1 million in December, and finally to 2.6 million in January. That's fewer viewers than an average episode of Fox News' “The Five.”
Of course, the debates suffered from two programming flaws that any TV producer fears: a lack of star power and a lack of suspense. Trump refused to appear in the debates, and the Republican primary ended up being a meager contest, with the former president winning in a landslide victory.
There is further uncertainty about the outcome of Thursday's Biden-Trump meeting, moderated by CNN hosts Dana Bash and Jake Tapper.
Expecting great success
CNN is hoping the debate will be its most-watched program in its 44-year history, though it could still lose out in Nielsen ratings to simulcasting rivals. Fox News, for example, drew more viewers than any other network to Biden's State of the Union address in March.
The speech was watched by an estimated 32.2 million people in total, up 18% from the 27.3 million viewers in 2023, making it one of the most-watched television broadcasts of the year.
Polls suggest that the likelihood of watching the debate increases with age: About three-quarters of adults over 60 said they would tune in to the show, compared with fewer than half of those 18 to 29, according to a survey conducted this month by NPR, PBS and Marist College. That could bode well for Nielsen ratings, which measure traditional TV viewers, who are mostly older. (Online and social media viewers are harder to measure accurately.)
“The people who are going to vote are the people who are still watching TV. God bless them,” said Tammy Haddad, a Washington socialite who is hosting a debate viewing party Thursday near Dupont Circle. “They're going to do well this time around, at the most important political event of the election season.”
By the numbers
New Poll: Voters Oppose Jan. 6 Amnesty
One issue that may come up in Thursday's speech is whether Trump, in his second term, would use his executive powers to pardon people convicted of taking part in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
It's something the former president has proposed repeatedly as he has made January 6 the centerpiece of his reelection effort, and his base seems to like the idea. But a new poll shows it's not widely popular among voters.
A YouGov America poll conducted for the Coalition to Defend Democracy and shared exclusively with me found that 59% of voters oppose amnesty for any crimes related to January 6, and 77% of voters, including a majority of Republicans, oppose pardoning people convicted of assaulting police officers that day. (My colleague Alan Feuer reported in April that roughly 500 people have been charged with assaulting police officers.)
While a majority of voters agreed with the idea that the January 6 pardons could incite future political unrest, the results were politically asymmetric: Only 31% of Republicans agreed with these concerns, compared with 92% of Democrats. But crucially, 57% of independents also agreed with these concerns, a figure that resonates with a key segment of the electorate.
The poll surveyed 1,200 voters in battleground states. To be clear, other polls have shown this isn't a top priority for most voters, who cite issues like the economy as bigger concerns. But the results bolster the Biden campaign's argument for focusing on democratic issues and could highlight how some of Trump's base's favorite causes could be problematic for him in the November election.
— Jess Bidgood
Citations and Notes
Arizona Trump supporters want to vote for abortion rights
“Even if Democrats are for it and Republicans are against it, my opinion won't change. I don't look at it politically, I look at it as a woman.”
— Judy McClanahan, Bullhead City, Arizona
In Arizona, two years after the downfall of Roe v. Wade, Democrats are hoping that a move to put abortion rights on the state's ballot this fall will boost support for President Biden. But the issue may not be that simple, as our colleagues at The Run-Up recently found. Voters like Judy McClanahan, who signed a petition in support of the ballot measure, say they support both abortion rights and Trump, who appointed the three Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. You can listen to parts 1 and 2 of their coverage here.