Election night 2024 has come and gone and viewers have been eagerly waiting to see which candidate will reign victorious – Kamala Harris or Donald Trump — another race was on in television, with networks competing for coveted ratings.

The big networks, including ABC, CBSand NBCpreempted their regular Tuesday night TV lineup for live election coverage, providing up-to-the-minute updates on the progress of Harris and Trump’s respective campaigns for the presidency, with some coverage late into the night and continuing into the morning.

So which network came out on top in the ratings department for the night? Was it NBC? ABC? CBS? MSNBC? Fox News? The answer might surprise you.

ABC / Craig Ambrosio

According to network totals, ABC ranked first with 5.665 million viewers overall, leading the largest groups in two key demos, with adults 25-54 totaling 2.156 million and adults 18-49 totaling 1.819 million. Next with 5,318 total viewers was NBC, which drew 2,115 million in the 25-54 demo and 1,762 million in adults 18-49.

CBS ranked third, with 3.490 million viewers, including 1.207 million adults 25-54 and 1.027 million adults 18-49. Rounding out the big four was Fox with 2.141 million viewers with 896K in adults 25-54 and 671K in adults 18-49. When it comes to network breakdowns, this is the first time in 16 years that ABC has led all three election night demos.

Overall, prime-time coverage for the election averaged about 36.6 million viewers across the big four and three cable news channels CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. The total is a steep drop from the 50.7 million in 2020 who tuned in to the same news outlets. On the cable side, Fox News led the evening with 9.8 million viewers, followed by MSNBC’s 5.5 million and CNN’s 4.71 million.

Where did you watch the election night news? Was it just one network or did you rotate channels as the results came in? Tell us in the comments section below.