Although CW decided to broadcast new episodes of 90210 and Privileged last night, we’re going to ignore that network for just this week.

While it would be hard for anyone to deny the significance of last night’s presidential election, how many people were actually tuned in? Here’s some of the highlights from yesterday’s political coverage:

• Approximately 71.5 million watched the events unfold over 14 different networks. That’s a 16% increase from 2000’s contest between George Bush and Al Gore (61.6 million) and a 21% increase over 2004’s battle between Bush and Kerry (59.2 million).
• Of the 71.5 million, 38.13 million saw Barack Obama become the President-elect via the four major networks.
• ABC‘s 13.1 million viewers bested the competition Monday. (That was the Alphabet network’s first win since 1996.) NBC had been holding the title since the 2000 election.
• CNN‘s 12.3 million actually beat CBS and NBC for 2nd place. That was the cable channel’s largest audience in its 28-year-history. That number almost doubled what the network saw in 2004.

(You can review last Tuesday’s ratings here.)