Nielsen data shows fewer than 10 million people watched the second Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night. The audience consisted of viewers of Fox News (6.7 million), Fox Business (1.8 million), and Univision (813,000), and is down from the 12.8 million viewers who tuned in last month for the first Republican primary debate, also hosted by Fox.
The 2015 debates, which featured Donald Trump, attracted record-breaking ratings, with the first drawing nearly 24 million viewers and the second seeing 22.9 million tune in. Without President Trump’s participation in this season’s debates, TV executives and the Republican National Committee are facing a dilemma in deciding whether it is worthwhile to produce events with such tepid interest and questionable significance given his dominance in the polls.
Despite the lower ratings, the GOP debate still had a larger audience than any other program on cable or network television on Wednesday evening. Trump is unlikely to appear at the next debate in November in Miami. One of his senior advisers has called on the Republican National Committee to refrain from scheduling any more debates for the primary season altogether, suggesting that Republicans should rally behind Trump and focus instead on defeating Joe Biden.