The CNN Republican debate in Las Vegas Tuesday night earned an average of 18 million viewers, making it the third most-watched primary debate in history. It is topped only by the first two Republican debates of the 2016 election cycle: Fox News' averaged 25 million viewers in August and CNN's averaged 24 million in September. The following GOP debates on CNBC and Fox Business Network were relatively smaller, earning only 14 and 13.5 million viewers respectively.
Notably, more people are watching the debates than ever: CNN points out that a Fox News GOP debate held on the same day four years ago only had 6.7 million viewers on average, which was considered "very high" at the time.
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