Bernie Sanders/Hillary Clinton CNN Town Hall Beats Fox News With Younger Viewers

Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 01:54 pm

Democrats showed their appeal to younger Americans as a CNN town hall featuring Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders drew more younger viewers than Fox News.

Since Fox has the conservative cable news market cornered, they won the night with total viewers, but Democrats showed their power with younger viewers as CNN’s town hall featuring Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton beat Fox, 653,000 to 632,603.

Fox News remains the television equivalent of a retirement home for angry older white conservatives. As Frank Rich wrote in a 2014 piece for New York Magazine, “Hard as it may be to fathom, Fox Nation is even more monochromatically white than the GOP is, let alone the American nation. Two percent of Mitt Romney’s voters were black. According to new Nielsen data, only 1.1 percent of Fox News’s prime-time viewership is (as opposed to 25 percent for MSNBC, 14 percent for CNN, and an average of roughly 12 percent for the three broadcast networks’ evening news programs).”
Fox News has the oldest audience on television, and their viewers only continue to age. Republicans have tried to win the last two presidential elections with nothing more than angry old white voters. The GOP is trying to run the same failed strategy again with Donald Trump as the potential face at the top of the ticket.

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Just like the Republican primaries, corning the market on angry older white voters will only get Fox News and the Republican Party so far. As the CNN town hall demonstrated, Democrats are the party of younger voters, and if a cable network wants to attract young eyeballs, they need more Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton and less of the rage circus that is the Republican primary.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association