Sunday’s highly-anticipated debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump drew new levels of interest from the YouTube community. The closely watched live debate and on-demand videos surrounding it generated over 124M views since Sunday, representing a 40 percent increase compared to the first presidential debate, which drove 88M views.

Of course many viewers came to YouTube to watch the debate live and we saw over 1.5M peak concurrent viewers, five times higher than the second presidential debate in 2012, and over 2.5M live watch hours, nearly six times higher than 2012.

Those viewers were highly engaged as well. On average, they watched the debate for nearly 25 minutes. And they came from all over the globe. After the U.S., top countries by viewership were: Canada, Mexico, Australia, Great Britain and Vietnam.

While much of the attention was on the debate, commentary continues to be a hot topic on YouTube. Sketches from some of the most popular late night shows were amongst the weekend’s most-viewed videos leading up to the debate. If you’re looking for a laugh after Sunday’s heated debate, check out Jimmy Fallon’s Trump calls Madea and Saturday Night Live’s Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton Debate Cold Open.

The final presidential debate is next Wednesday, Oct. 19, and we’ll bring you all the action live on YouTube from Las Vegas, Nev.

Brandon Feldman, YouTube News & Politics, recently watched the second presidential debate.

YouTube Blog