The State of the Union address drew a smaller audience than last year’s presidential address to Congress.
President Donald Trump’s 107-minute speech (the longest on record) drew 32.64 million viewers across 15 broadcast and cable outlets. That’s down 11 percent from the 36.63 million people who tuned into Trump’s address to Congress last year, also on 15 networks (the 2025 address was not technically a State of the Union as it came at the start of a new administration).
Per usual, the big four broadcast networks and three largest cable news channels — ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, the Fox broadcast network, MS Now and NBC — accounted for a large majority of the audience. Together they had 27.8 million viewers, based on preliminary numbers, while the remaining eight outlets (EstrellaTV, Telemundo, Univision, PBS, CNNe, Fox Business, Newsmax and NewsNation) had the rest.
Fox News led the way with 9.1 million viewers, well in front of ABC’s 5.1 million. The latter was the top broadcast net for the speech for the sixth straight year, outdrawing NBC (3.6 million), CBS (3.3 million) and the Fox broadcast network (2.1 million). MS Now (2.4 million) beat out CNN (2.2 million).
Fox News also topped the core news demographic of adults 25-54 with 1.47 million such viewers, followed by ABC (1.22 million), NBC (1.02 million) and CBS (815,000). CNN (655,000) moved in front of the Fox broadcast (560,000) and MS Now (323,000) in the demo.
Per Nielsen, about 72 percent of the total audience (23.62 million people) was over the age of 55. The speech drew 5.96 million viewers aged 35-54 and 2.05 million 18- to 34-year-olds. A shade more than 1 million kids and teenagers also watched.
A decline for the State of the Union a year after a president takes office is fairly common in recent history. Following their initial addresses to Congress shortly after taking office, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Trump in his first term all drew smaller audiences for the next year’s State of the Union. The exceptions are George W. Bush in 2002, a few months after the 9/11 attacks, and Joe Biden in 2022, whose first address to Congress came much later than usual (late April 2021) due to health restrictions during the height of the COVID pandemic.
Feb. 26, 2:15 p.m. Updated with final ratings across 15 networks for the State of the Union.
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