TV Ratings: Blue Wave Fuels Surge in Midterm Election Night Viewing, NBC Leads Early

A dominant showing by Democrats in the 2026 midterms also resulted in — at least for one night — a realignment in viewing of election night news coverage.

Early data from Nielsen shows NBC leading primetime Tuesday night, by a wide enough margin that it will likely hold up through further adjustments to the ratings. That’s a big change from the 2022 midterms, when NBC finished fourth among the six most watched news outlets. NBC also claimed the most watched live stream of election night with its “Kornacki Cam,” focused solely on data analyst and video board operator Steve Kornacki.

In the likely event the preliminary ratings carry through, NBC will be the first broadcast network to lead a federal election night in total viewers since the 2012 presidential election (also topped by NBC). Election coverage across outlets is already up compared to 2022, but it might not hit the historically high levels of the 2018 midterms.

NBC averaged 6.52 million viewers in primetime, based on Nielsen fast national ratings. ABC finished second with 4.91 million viewers. The three largest cable news channels — CNN (3.93 million), MS NOW (3.92 million) and Fox News (3.88 million) — are currently within 50,000 viewers of one another. CBS is further back at 2.63 million viewers.

The fast nationals are the earliest ratings from Nielsen and in this case don’t include either out of home viewing or the company’s big data component — i.e., the numbers are pretty likely to change some. NBC should hold onto its primetime lead, but the cable networks are so tightly bunched that the order could easily get mixed up. This story will be updated, including comparisons to networks’ performance four years ago, as more ratings data becomes available.

The combined total of 25.79 million viewers across the six networks is already ahead of the final, 12-network total for the 2022 midterms of 25.43 million. The 2018 total of 36.11 million viewers across 11 outlets, the highest for a midterm election night this century, is probably out of reach.

NBC also had a sizable lead in the core TV news ad demographic of adults 25-54, averaging 2.8 million in primetime. ABC (1.61 million) and CNN (1.44 million) followed, while Fox News (741,000), CBS (715,000) and MS NOW (701,000) were tightly bunched.

The live stream of the Kornacki Cam generated 29 million views across all platforms, NBC News says, including 6.1 million on YouTube. It peaked there with some 300,000 concurrent streams between 8:30 and 11:30 p.m. ET.