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How many people watched the Fox Business Republican debate?

Fox Business Network had the highest rated program in its history Tuesday night when 13.5 million people tuned in to watch the fourth Republican presidential debate, according to Nielsen Media Research.

The debate also broke records for livestream viewership of a primary election event, with 1.4 million concurrent streams, according to Akamai. By comparison, NBC had 1.3 million concurrent livestream viewers for the 2015 Superbowl and CNN had 921,000 concurrent livestreams for the second Republican debate.

Winners and losers of fourth GOP presidential debate 02:29

The undercard debate held at 7 p.m. got 4.7 million viewers.

Interest in the debates remains strong but has still dropped off significantly since the debates began in August. Twenty-four million people tuned into Fox News see the first Republican debate in Cleveland, and another 22.9 million watched CNN's Republican debate in Simi Valley, California. Another 14 million tuned into the CNBC debate in late October.

By comparison, 15.3 million people watched watched the first Democratic debate in October.

The debate ranked as the No. 1 event on Twitter with a unique audience of 6 million people viewing tweets and 180 million impressions, according to Nielsen Social.

CBS News, along with its Des Moines affiliate KCCI and the Des Moines Register, will host the second Democratic debate Saturday evening at 9pm.

This article has been updated to clarify the debate performance on Twitter.

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