RedState Is Having a Red-Hot Year (Even Without Katie Hill)

By HOWARD POLSKIN, November 1, 2019

Can RedState make a mountain of traffic out of its reporting on Congresswoman Katie Hill?  Last month’s traffic numbers from Comscore aren’t in yet, but if October buzz from its controversial stories about the beleaguered politician could be converted into audience, RedState would be having a whopper of a month. 

 Even without the possible traffic boost from the Hill-related articles, the conservative-leaning website is having a banner year.  Through September of 2019, RedState has generated eight months of year-over-year (YOY) audience increases, according to my analysis of Comscore data.  For instance, in August 2019, RedState registered a 160% rise in unique visitors compared to the August 2018.  Let’s put that in practical terms.  In August 2018, the site attracted 436,000 unique visitors.  Flash forward a year, and the number of uniques ballooned to 1,133,000.  That’s a boost of 700,000. In fact, only twice this year has RedState failed to post a double-digit YOY increase.

 Here’s how RedState’s 2019 traffic breaks down each month: January, YOY unique visitors +5%; February, +43%; March, +57%; April, +43%; May, +58%; June, +126%; July, +93%; August, +160%; and September, -15%.

 RedState’s success this year has been eclipsed by other strong brands in the conservative media space.  Both the Washington Examiner and TheBlaze have notched nine straight months of traffic gains in 2019.  Those two sites draw as much as six times the traffic as RedState and consistently rank near the top of TheRighting’s top 20 conservative websites.  RedState is closer to the bottom 25% of that list.

 I reached out to Jonathan Garthwaite, Vice President and General Manager of Townhall Media (which also runs a cluster of other conservative-leaning media outlets including Townhall, Hot Air, Twitchy and PJ Media) for an explanation of RedState’s audience growth in 2019. “Just smart writers working hard,” he replied.

 We’ll see if those writers can keep working hard in the coming months to draw more visitors to the conservative website.  I suspect it’s not as simple as that.

 And as far as RedState’s October traffic numbers – which we’ll know in mid-November – I predict a modest increase and possibly even a decline.  It will be measured against October 2018, the month of the Kavanaugh confirmation, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre.  Those types of dramatic news events produce strong traffic for news and opinion websites that will be tough to beat, no matter how many risqué photos of politicians RedState published in October.   

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