A strong showing by Democrats in off-year elections Tuesday helped translate to strong TV ratings for what’s seen as the most Dem-friendly cable news outlet, MSNBC.
The channel drew its largest primetime audience of 2025 and led cable news with 3.04 million viewers, according to preliminary ratings from Nielsen (which include out of home viewing but not the ratings service’s big data component). MSNBC finished a little head of Fox News (2.85 million viewers), while CNN came in at 1.78 million. CNN led among the key news demographic of adults 25-54 with 574,000 such viewers to 490,000 for MSNBC and 448,000 for Fox News.
In both measures, all three outlets were well above their recent primetime numbers: MSNBC and CNN each more than tripled their average total audience from the past month, and Fox News drew about 500,000 more viewers than a typical night.
Tuesday marked the first night MSNBC led Fox News in both total viewers and adults 25-54 since the Democratic National Convention in August 2024. It was the network’s best showing for an off-year election night since 2019.
Fox news still led the full 24-hour day on Tuesday with 1.97 million viewers, based on fast national numbers that don’t include out of home viewing. MSNBC drew 1.28 million — again, its best showing of the year so far — and CNN averaged 748,000.
Tuesday’s results saw Democrats win governorships in Virginia (Abigail Spanberger) and New Jersey (Mikie Sherrill) and Zohran Mamdani elected as mayor of New York City and California pass a redistricting proposition that could further tip the state’s congressional delegation to Democrats.
Tuesday night’s election coverage will be the last for MSNBC — at least under its current name. The channel is rebranding as MS NOW on Nov. 15 as it prepares to spin off from NBCUniversal; it and fellow cable nets CNBC, USA Network, E!, Syfy, Oxygen and Golf Channel will be part of a new company called Versant. MSNBC has already separated its editorial operations from NBC News and thus had its own reporters in the field on an election night for the first time in network history.
