– Audience grows despite election turnout decline

-RTÉ Coverage in Numbers

The results of Election 2020 have seen the public turn to RTÉ in record numbers this week. As nail biting counts unfolded, the public interest in politics broke records across RTÉ’s public broadcasting services.

On television, over 2.5 million* viewers tuned into RTÉ One’s Election 2020 results and news coverage across the three days as RTÉ broadcast over 31 hours of live TV.

RTE’s online services also saw record levels of engagement with over 31.5 million page views in just two days, an increase of 30% on the general election in 2016.

Younger audiences were particularly engaged with RTÉ programming. 51% of 15-34yrs old watching TV on Saturday night chose to watch the special exit poll programme on RTÉ One.

With over 50 hours of live radio coverage across RTÉ Radio 1 and RTÉ Raidio na Gaeltachta listeners kept tuned to RTÉ stations wherever they were; including over 280,000 digital radio streams.

Despite voter turnout being down, figures show audience interest increased as RTÉ provided extensive coverage. 44% of people in the Republic of Ireland watched 15 minutes or more of RTÉ One’s Election 2020 results and news coverage**. This is an increase of 100,000 viewers on 2016.

Sunday night’s Six One News became the most watched news programme of the year across all channels with an audience of 770,000 viewers on average.

With over 31 hours of live TV election results and news coverage on RTÉ One, the mammoth broadcasts saw presenters Bryan Dobson, Miriam O’Callaghan, David McCullagh and Claire Byrne keep viewers enthralled with breaking results, expert insight and statistical analysis.

A total of 3.4 million unique visitors used RTÉ’s online services over Sunday and Monday from 202 countries worldwide, including  Greenland, Chad, Vatican City and Turkmenistan.

TV election and news content generated 675,000 video streams across RTÉ’s online service following the closing of ballot boxes.

RTÉ co-produced over 20 hours of live Irish language election results coverage for TG4 in addition to regular Nuacht bulletins on RTÉ One. Election 2020 also saw the launch of an Irish language live online tracker by RTÉ with all the latest news and results, for the first time. RTE had over 30 journalists on the ground dedicated to providing Irish language news content from constituency counts across Raidió na Gaeltachta and Nuacht. 

E​lection 2020 also saw RTÉ engaging with the future journalists of Ireland as it teamed up with a number of universities around the country. 39 young student journalists joined the RTÉ count centre teams contributing to social media content for RTÉ News.

Sources: 

Data for online traffic (unique browsers and page impressions) –  AT Internet analytics

Television viewing figures source – TAM Ireland / Nielsen TAM, Live + VOSDAL

* Election 2020 and News related programming combined registered a +1 minute reach figure of 2.5 million for Individuals RTÉ One & RTÉ One +1 (Sat Exit Poll only, Sun & Mon broadcasts)

**Election 2020 coverage & News registered a +15 minute reach figure of 2.068 million for Individuals RTÉ One & RTÉ One +1 combined (Sun & Mon broadcasts)

The total number of page views across RTÉ’s online news content during the election count (Sunday and Monday) totalled 31.5 million page views.