Completely wrong analysis on the OP’s part. The debates have dropped greatly in ratings since the first two. CNN’s 2nd and FoxBiz’s 2nd were much lower than the first. This one was going to be much lower than Fox’s first. Only about 2 million more people watched CNN and MSNBC than normal, so that’s all you can say Trump’s fans who bolted from Fox consisted of. If the real number is 14 million then I’d say there was very little audience out there who simply didn’t watch either channel. 15 to at the absolute most 16 million is about the ratings that would’ve been expected for this debate normally.
Most people watched it on C-Span, NewsMax, OANN, or streaming through their laptops or computers. There was no way that those viewers could be counted.
Just look at the difference between the debate thread and the Cruz RALLY THREAD and those debate threads and all of Trump's RALLY THREAD and last night's Trump VETS RALLY thread. All of the ones with Trump have many, many, MANY more posts.
For example...one night there was a Cruz Rally thread and a Trump Rally thread on the same night. at one point, the Cruz thread had barely 50 posts, whilst the Trump one had at least 500 posts!
One had not so happy posts, with many of them about Trump, the Trump thread was filled with HAPPY posters, with perhaps one or two mentions of Cruz and ONLY because some Cruz supporter was TROLLING !