10.8 Million Watch Biden-Sanders Democratic Debate On CNN

10.8 million viewers watched Sunday night’s Democratic presidential debate—the first to feature a head-to-head matchup between the two remaining candidates, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.

The debate was relocated from Arizona to a studio in CNN’s Washington bureau, a far smaller space than the grand halls where most presidential debates are held, allowing for audiences, sweeping camera shots and plenty of pageantry. Instead, the candidates stood at lecterns with the moderators seated at a desk. It was stark, and certainly matched the atmosphere in much of the country. As Michael Grunbaum wrote in The New York Times, “on an eerie night in America, CNN held a two-hour debate…that, in television terms, bordered on the surreal.”

The debate, which focused extensively on the threat of the coronavirus and the Trump Administration’s handling of the pandemic, featured moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash of CNN and Ilia Calderon of media partner Univision sitting a short distance away from Biden and Sanders, who greeted each other with an elbow bump rather than a handshake. Questions focused on the government response to the virus, what they’d do as president, and even about how they were adjusting their own lives and campaigns to avoid becoming sick.

The debate saw a decline in viewership from the last time the Democratic candidates met, when 15.3 million viewers watched on CBS, and well off the 20 million who tuned in for NBC’s February debate in Las Vegas—the highest-rated Democratic primary debate ever.