The 2024 US presidential election became one of the biggest events of the year, so it’s no surprise that it was heavily covered in live streams. Streams Charts reported which streaming platforms attracted the largest audiences on Election Day and which streamers set new personal viewership records thanks to the elections.
In September, the live-streaming industry buzzed with excitement over the debates between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, and on Election Day, viewer engagement was even higher.
Overall Viewership Statistics in live-streaming during U.S.Election Day
On Election Day, live streams covering the election generated nearly 84 million hours of watch time — almost five times more than the viewership for the September debates. The debates lasted just a few hours, while on Election Day, some broadcasts ran non-stop from the start of voting until the results were announced.
Peak viewership for political streams on Election Day hit over 9.14 million viewers, with the average number of viewers throughout the day approaching 3.5 million AV. Notably, audience engagement spiked closer to the end of voting and when the results were finally announced.
The main platform where viewers tuned in for Election Day coverage was YouTube, which accounted for over 80% of total watch time across all election-related broadcasts. In second place was Rumble, with 13.1%. The bulk of the viewership came from the United States, making up about 72.3% of total watch time. The election also sparked significant interest in India and the UK.
Top Media Companies' Channels covering U.S.Election
The 2024 US presidential election was covered by media outlets worldwide, many of which streamed live broadcasts on various platforms. The most-watched broadcast on Election Day was Fox News on YouTube, which peaked at over 1.14 million Peak Viewers — a historic record for the channel.
In second place, almost doubling the gap behind Fox, was NBC News, with 616.9K Peak Viewers. Interestingly, NBC's coverage of the Trump vs. Harris debate in September actually drew more viewers, with nearly 930K tuning in live on YouTube.
It’s worth noting that all the top broadcasts were on YouTube, as this platform remains the primary choice for TV networks to stream their content online.
Most Popular Individual Streamers who covered U.S.Election Day
Among the top streamers covering the presidential election on Election Day, Dan Bongino and Steven Crowder — political commentators on Rumble — drew the largest audiences. As we reported earlier, both not only set new personal records for peak viewership on their channels but also became the most popular channels on the platform thanks to their election coverage.
In third place was HasanAbi, the top political commentator on Twitch. His Election Day stream peaked at 313.4K PV, marking a historic record for his channel. Another notable streamer from Twitch in the top 10 was American streamer zackrawrr (Asmongold).
Also worth mentioning is American political activist Charlie Kirk, who made the top 10 with two separate channels, one on YouTube and one on Rumble.
The most popular channels covering the U.S. Election Day on election day
Trump and Harris Mentions on Twitch
During the entire election campaign, Trump consistently outpaced Harris in Twitch chat mentions. On average, the Republican candidate had a 70% share of mentions, compared to just 30% for his Democratic opponent. It's worth noting that these mentions don't reflect context — the messages could be either supportive or critical of the candidates.
Statistics on candidates mentions on U.S. Election Day
Just before the election, Streams Charts launched an interactive page where users could track the dynamics of candidate mentions in Twitch chats. Over the past six months, Harris never once surpassed Trump in daily mentions. During their debate, Trump was mentioned in over 74.3K messages on Twitch, while Harris had only about 33.3K. On Election Day, Trump’s mentions jumped to 104K, while Harris saw hers rise to 41.6K.
Dynamics of mentions of candidates on U.S. Election Day
Interestingly, Election Day marked the highest number of mentions for Harris on Twitch throughout the entire campaign, while for Trump, it was only his second-highest. Trump saw a much higher volume of mentions in July, following the assassination attempt on him in Pennsylvania — during that period, mentions of Trump in Twitch chats peaked at 159.7K in a single day.
As for the channels, viewers on Twitch most frequently discussed the candidates in HasanAbi’s chat, where we tracked over 150K mentions of both Trump and Harris in a month. Trump was mentioned twice as often as the Democratic candidate.
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