2024 Presidential Debate: Cross-Screen Performance

Given the change on the Democratic ticket from President Joe Biden to Vice President Kamala Harris, the excitement generated by the parties’ vice presidential selections, and the polls with razor-thin margins, it’s not surprising that we have seen increased viewership nationally over the Biden/Trump debate for key demos. However, elections by nature are hyper-local, so the story is in the details.

Local TV & The Power of Linear TV

Looking at major markets in battleground states for the Harris-Trump debate on September 10th, we saw the largest jump in viewership over the previous debate between Trump and Biden in Philadelphia with impressions for HHs w/ A18+ up 28.4%. Philadelphia was quickly followed by Detroit, MI, and Raleigh-Durham, NC with increases in viewership of approximately 28% and 22%, respectively.

If we dig a little deeper into one of the hottest battleground states – Georgia – we start to see another trend appear. Out of all the local television markets in Georgia, the smaller markets (those ranked 75+) had the highest bumps in viewership versus the previous presidential debate with most of these markets showing over 20% growth for HHs w/ A18+. Small-town America is leaning into this election and should not be discounted when it comes to political buys.

2024 Election Season on Social Media

Social media has become increasingly important to campaign strategy in the last several elections, and engagement on social channels showed no signs of slowing for this debate week. Despite third-party coverage being used positively and negatively towards each candidate, the candidates’ owned channels remain a strong force in driving social media discussion.

Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris drove strong total actions during debate week. Looking at the two days before the September 10th debate through the two days following it - Trump earned 10.8M total actions, while Harris earned 11.7M. Despite Harris driving nearly 1M more total actions, the key difference in the candidates’ social strategies remains in the frequency of posting. In these five days, Donald Trump posted 34 pieces of content, while Kamala Harris posted 105 pieces of content – over 200% more.

While owned accounts are a crucial part of the social media story during an election cycle, it is the third-party earned coverage that drives particularly strong engagement. In the same time period prior to and following the debate - posts including significant debate keywords drove 179.8M total actions, and 1.3B total video views. Instagram and TikTok drove this conversation, 58M and 84M total actions, respectively.