Election Year Traffic Plunges for Most News Websites in March;
Traffic to Truth Social Soars
May 3, 2024, New York, NY – TheRighting released its March 2024 election year traffic analysis of mobile and desktop traffic for right wing and mainstream news websites based on Comscore data.
Among the highlights of TheRighting’s March 2024 findings:
MARCH 2024 VS MARCH 2020: THE ELECTION YEAR COMPARISON
News websites representing both sides of the political spectrum suffered huge drops in unique visitors in March 2024 compared to March 2020. For its third election year comparison report, TheRighting found that only Newsmax posted an audience increase of the 21 it surveyed. Almost all of the rest suffered major year-over-year (YOY) declines in unique visitors.
The Washington Times (-92%) and The Washington Examiner (-91%) led all news websites in audience losses between March 2020 and March 2024.
The three mainstream news outlets TheRighting follows regularly saw audience erosion: CNN (-34%), The New York Times (-46%) and The Washington Post (-61%).
“The enormous traffic decreases in March 2024 was expected,” said Howard Polskin, President and Founder, TheRighting. “Because of the pandemic, which mushroomed into a huge global story four years ago and touched everyone on the planet, March 2020 was one of the most tumultuous months this century. The traffic in March 2020 reflected the public’s almost insatiable appetite for news, insights and opinion about the pandemic from a wide variety of news sources. March 2024, by comparison, was a relatively stable news month resulting in much softer audience levels for most news websites.”
MARCH 2024 VS MARCH 2023
Five right wing news websites posted YOY traffic increases in March: The Federalist, Townhall, Infowars, the Washington Free Beacon and the Daily Signal. After three straight months of YOY traffic gains, Newsmax saw its audience fall 1%.
The three mainstream news websites TheRighting follows also experienced YOY audience declines. Traffic to CNN, which led all news websites tracked by TheRighting with 115 million unique visitors in March 2024, fell 5%. Dips were also recorded at The Washington Post (-5%) and The New York Times (-4%).
YOY Winners and Losers Among Top 20 Right Wing News Websites for March 2024
(by unique visitor percentage increase/decrease from year ago)
Winners
· The Federalist (+121%)
· Townhall (+33%)
· Infowars (+27%)
Losers
· Western Journal (-72%)
· RedState(-66%)
· Daily Wire (-58%)
The Truth About Truth Social Traffic
Truth Social generated 5 million unique visitors in March, its largest traffic volume ever since its February 2022 launch. The site appeared to benefit from the closing of the DWAC transaction in March resulting in the Trump Media and Technology Group becoming a publicly traded stock. Furthermore, traffic rose 54% compared to March 2023, more than any other considerative-friendly social media platform TheRighting follows:
· Rumble (6,033,000 unique visitors; -54% vs year ago)
· Truth Social (5,013,000; +54% vs year ago)
· Gettr (152,000; -72% vs year ago)
Source: Comscore Media Metrix® Multi-Platform, Custom-defined list, including, but not limited to Foxnews.com, Breitbart.com, DailyCaller.com, WashingtonExaminer.com, WesternJournal.com, Washingtontimes.com, Total Digital Audience, March 2024, U.S.
