The audience for the first presidential debate of the year, held on Thursday between former US president Donald Trump and current leader Joe Biden, was the lowest in two decades, according to a preliminary report released by CNN.
The survey shows that 49.7 million people turned on their televisions to watch the debate, a low number of audiences that had not been seen in a first presidential face-to-face since the first between Democrat Al Gore and the Republican ( and later president) George W. Bush in 2000, according to data collected by the think tank Pew Research Center.
The debate caused a political uproar among Democrats due to Biden’s poor performance, with many analysts traditionally aligned with this party calling for his replacement as candidate in the November 5 elections.
Justin Sullivan
This is not the first time that Biden and Trump have faced each other in a television debate: the first of the 2020 election cycle, when the Republican lost the White House, attracted more than 73 million Americans.
However, the September 2016 debate between Hillary Clinton and Trump during the 2016 election was the most watched in the country’s history, with more than 84 million viewers.
Trump burst onto the national political scene seven years ago, after defeating Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State and representative of the Democratic political elite.
