President Trump says Fox News cost Republicans the midterms, and the network’s own ratings numbers are now part of the fight.
Quick Take
- Trump blamed Fox News for GOP midterm losses on election night, saying the network gave too much airtime to Democrats.
- Fox News averaged 1.1 million viewers in October 2026, a drop of about 27% from the year before.
- Trump’s own convention speech on Fox drew about 2.5 million viewers, close to the channel’s normal audience that month.
- Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch blames general viewer fatigue, not a swing toward rival networks.
Trump Points The Finger At Fox On Election Night
As Democratic wins rolled in, Trump posted on Truth Social that Fox News “bears responsibility” for the losses. He said the network kept putting “the Dumocrat opposition” on air, and worse. It was a sharp, direct accusation aimed at a network long seen as friendly ground for Republicans.
Trump tied his complaint to hard numbers. He cited a 27% drop in Fox’s ratings, writing that the network was “spending too much time covering the Trump Deranged Dumocrats.” Fox’s own October 2026 average came in near 1.1 million viewers, down from the same month a year earlier, matching the figure Trump used.
What The Ratings Actually Show
A ratings slide is real and documented. Whether that slide swung elections is a much bigger claim, and the numbers alone can’t prove it. Audience size tells you who watched. It does not tell you how they voted, why they voted that way, or whether any specific Fox broadcast changed a single mind in a swing district.
Trump’s own convention speech offers a useful test case. Nielsen data showed about 2.5 million people watched on Fox during the 9 to 11 p.m. window. That’s nearly identical to the 2.51 million who tuned in for Fox’s regular Gutfeld program in August. CNN described the speech as drawing close to Fox’s normal prime-time crowd, with no sign of a special “Trump bump”.
Fox Still Beat Its Cable Rivals That Night
Fox’s audience for the speech dwarfed its competitors. MS NOW pulled in roughly 1 million viewers during the same window, and CNN drew about 441,000, according to the Nielsen figures reported by Mediaite. That gap undercuts any simple story about viewers fleeing Fox for other news channels. If people were punishing Fox, they weren’t rewarding CNN or MS NOW with their attention instead.
Fox’s Own Explanation Points Elsewhere
Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch offered a competing explanation for the broader ratings dip. He said viewers “are not going to any other news channel.” Instead, he described general fatigue, with audiences simply watching somewhat less television overall across the board. That’s a notable admission from a network executive, since it concedes a real decline while rejecting the idea that viewers are rejecting Fox for a rival.
CNN’s coverage went further, framing Trump’s claim as an attempt to shift blame away from Republican candidates and the party’s own midterm performance. That’s a fair point worth weighing. Candidates, campaign spending, and local issues usually decide close races far more than any single network’s programming choices on a given night.
What Research Says About Cable News And Votes
This isn’t the first time Fox’s influence on elections has come under a microscope. Academic researchers at Stanford and Emory found that Fox News entering new cable markets did shift some voters toward Republican candidates over time, estimating the network persuaded a meaningful share of its viewers. Other studies found similar rightward shifts in voter attitudes tied to Fox viewership stretching from 2000 to 2020.
But those effects were measured over years of steady viewing across huge populations, not a single speech or one bad ratings month. Treating a 27% year-over-year dip as proof that Fox cost the GOP specific races skips a lot of steps. No campaign data, internal Fox memo, or voter survey in the public record currently draws that direct line.
What’s left is a real ratings decline, a real set of midterm losses, and a president eager to connect the two. Conservative voters who trust Fox deserve a clearer answer than dueling press statements. Until someone produces actual voter data linking Fox’s coverage to lost races, this remains a dispute over blame, not a proven case of cause and effect.
Sources:
cnbc.com, edition.cnn.com, cleveland.com, thehill.com, econ.umd.edu, nber.org
