Bernie Sanders No Kamala Harris But Bests Other Candidates In CNN Town Hall Ratings

Bernie Sanders’ first town hall since declaring himself a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate clocked 1.40 million viewers Monday night on CNN. While Sanders was no match for Kamala Harris, who drew the biggest crowd for a single-candidate town hall in CNN history with just under 2M viewers on January 28, his is the second most watched CNN presidential candidate town hall to date.

Sanders came in comfortably ahead the network’s February 12 town hall with former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, moderated by Poppy Harlow. Schultz drew just 1.02M viewers. Sanders also drew more viewer interest than did Sen. Amy Klobuchar, whose February 18 CNN town hall, moderated by Don Lemon, averaged 1.15M viewers.

Like Kamala Harris, Schultz and Klobuchar’s town halls aired at 10 PM ET, while Sanders had one strike against him with an 8 PM ET/5 PM PT start time.

With 512,000 viewers in the 25-54 news demo, Sanders also ran ahead of Schultz (343K) and Klobuchar (298K) in the metric, but behind Harris (708K) – which is relevant to advertisers, though maybe not so much for the candidates who welcome voters under the age of 25 and, more to the point, over the age of 54.