Democratic debate viewership drops 43 percent from June's opening round

Viewership for Tuesday's opening night of the second round of Democratic debates wasn't nearly as impressive as June's first round, though it was far from a disaster for CNN.

About 8.6 million people tuned in for Tuesday's debate, which featured Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) but not former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), per The Hollywood Reporter. This represents a 43 percent drop from the 15.2 million people who tuned into the first night of Democratic debates last month, but then again, that debate aired across three different networks — NBC, MSNBC, and Telemundo — while Tuesday's debate only aired on CNN.

Despite the drop-off, the debate was still CNN's second highest-rated Democratic primary debate. The record is the October 2015 debate that kicked off that year's primary and drew 15.4 million people; the Reporter notes that the following debate after that drew 8.5 million viewers on CBS, so this week's decline is about on par with that.

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Given that Biden and Harris will participate in Wednesday night's debate, and their confrontation is highly anticipated after a tense stand-off last month, viewership is likely to rise as it did for the second night of debates in June. Still, don't expect it to come anywhere close to the record-breaking 18.1 million people who tuned in to the second night of last month's debates.