On Wednesday, the third and final presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump took place in Las Vegas. It was live streamed on YouTube, as well as other websites like Facebook and Twitter. Now this debate didn’t get as much live viewers as the first one, which did record numbers, but it was still a pretty popular debate. And that shouldn’t be a surprise, as this was the last time the two major-party candidates would be on the same stage in an attempt to lure voters to vote for them on November 8th. Now YouTube has said that their live stream coverage of the debates this year was the most watched political live stream ever. Of course that shouldn’t be a surprise given the number of cordcutters out there. And the fact that you could watch YouTube from virtually anywhere, whether it was live or after the debate occurred.
In their post today, YouTube also noted that there were 2.8 million “live watch hours”, and that is down from the first debate which hit 3 million, but up from the second debate which was a town hall style debate and it had 2.5 million. It’s also important to note here that YouTube worked with all of the major news organizations to live stream the debates. So this isn’t just YouTube doing better than ABC, NBC, CNN and the others out there. In fact, they did so well because of them.
The first debate saw 88 million views on all debate-related videos. The second debate netted 124 million and the third debate was the strongest with 140 million views. It’s important to note here that these debate-related videos are much more than just the live streams. But also all of the content that was posted about the debate. Including videos from the likes of The Daily Show, Stephen Colbert and others.
It’s clear that this year’s debates were the most watched debates in history. Which is really telling and shows why this upcoming presidential election is such a big deal. The US may end up with their first woman president or the first president that was not a politician.