NBC News Wins a Midterm Election Night for the First Time in 24 Years: 6.5 Million Viewers, and a "Kornacki Cam" 29 Million People Watched

The strangest ratings story of the year is a news division finishing a race it last won in 2002. NBC News averaged more than 6.5 million viewers in primetime on Tuesday's midterm election night, according to preliminary Nielsen ratings released by NBC and reported by USA TODAY — the first time the network has won a midterm election night in total viewers in 24 years.

The table

The full field, as USA TODAY prints the numbers:

• NBC: more than 6.5 million viewers in primetime.
• ABC: 5.1 million, based on Nielsen data provided by the network.
• CNN: 4.159 million. MS NOW: 4.156 million. Fox News: 4.04 million — three cable networks finishing within 120,000 viewers of one another.
• CBS: 2.63 million.

The comparison that explains the headline is NBC's own past. In the 2022 midterms, per Broadcasting+Cable as cited by USA TODAY, NBC ranked fourth of six with 3.1 million viewers — less than half the audience it drew on Tuesday. (One piece of the night's sniping, recorded with its source attached: a Fox News press release pointed out that CBS's evening newscast delivered what it called the "lowest rated midterm of the 21st century." That's Fox's characterisation, via USA TODAY, and it's labelled as such.)

The other broadcast

The night's second story ran on a second screen. For the first time, Steve Kornacki appeared simultaneously in NBC's broadcast coverage and on his dedicated "Kornacki Cam" livestream, from the same physical set. The stream ranked No. 1 among election livestreams on YouTube, according to NBC, and drew a record 29 million views across platforms, including 6.1 million on YouTube.

It was scheduled to run 13 hours. It ended at hour ten, at 3:26 a.m. ET, when Kornacki walked off and didn't return. His explanation, posted to X in the early morning and printed in full by USA TODAY: "I was sure 13 hours would be fine but things caught up to me in a hurry at hour 10. Sorry for the abrupt ending!"

A record audience, a first win in 24 years, and the star of the night apologising for leaving early. The figures above are preliminary Nielsen numbers; finals can move them. If they move materially, this desk will print the finals the way it printed the SNL finals earlier this week — as a follow-up, on the record.