Nearly 44 million Americans tuned in to see Vice President Dick Cheney square off against Sen. John Edwards in the most watched debate between nominees for the No. 2 spot on the presidential ticket since 1992, ratings showed yesterday.
The 43.6 million tally for Tuesday night's debate far surpassed the audience for either Cheney's debate four years ago with Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman (29 million viewers) or the 1996 contest between then-Vice President Al Gore and Republican challenger Jack Kemp (26.6 million), Nielsen Media Research reported.
The three-way vice presidential debate in 1992 among Gore, Republican Dan Quayle and independent James Stockdale averaged 51.2 million viewers.
As usual, interest in the vice presidential debate paled in comparison to the verbal sparring at the top of the ticket. A total of 62.5 million Americans tuned in last Thursday to see the opening debate between President Bush and Edwards' running mate, Sen. John Kerry.
Still, the audience for the Cheney-Edwards debate in Cleveland, moderated by Gwen Ifill of PBS, eclipsed two of the three Gore-Bush debates in 2000 and both of the matchups between Clinton and Republican challenger Bob Dole in 1996.
NBC provided the most-watched coverage of Tuesday's broadcast with 11.5 million viewers. ABC was second with 10.3 million, followed by CBS with 9.2 million.
Fox News Channel ranked fourth with 7.8 million viewers, ahead of CNN with 3.3 million and MSNBC with nearly 1.5 million. The Fox Broadcasting Co., a separate commercial network that aired last week's presidential debate, carried a baseball playoff game instead on Tuesday.
An ABC News poll of viewers showed that more Republicans tuned in to the Cheney-Edwards debate than Democrats -- 38 percent to 31 percent, with the rest identifying themselves as political independents.
Cheney fared better among Republican viewers than Edwards did among Democrats, with 80 percent of Bush supporters saying Cheney won the debate and 69 percent of Kerry backers saying Edwards did better.