5.5m watch Sunak v Starmer: The ITV Debate
June 5, 2024

Sunak v Starmer: The ITV Debate on June 4th drew in a peak of 5.5 million viewers (average 5 million) across devices, an increase of almost 2 million viewers on the Conservative Prime Minister debate in 2022.
The combination of the leaders’ debate on ITV1, Love Island on ITV2 and the Lioness football qualifier (England vs France) on ITV4 secured ITV a 71 per cent share across 16-34 year old viewers.
The ITV debate was also the biggest Current Affairs audience on any channel since last year’s King’s Coronation, and the biggest on ITV since Oprah’s interview with Meghan and Harry in 2021.
The ITV Election Interviews, presented by Anushka Asthana, which followed the debate on ITV1 and ITVX was watched by 1.3 million with a peak of 2.6 million. It was the best performance in the slot this year and up on the slot average by 52 per cent.
A snap YouGov poll of 1,657 viewers on how people feel each party leader performed, and who they think came across best showed Rishi Sunak was narrowly seen as having given the best performance by 51 per cent to Keir Starmer’s 49 per cent. Nevertheless, slightly more think Starmer performed well (60 per cent) than Rishi Sunak (55 per cent).