Trump Assassination Attempt and Biden Decision Drive Huge Audience Gains
Truth Social Attracts Record-Breaking Unique Visitors
TheRighting released its July 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 July 2024 findings:
JULY 2024 VS JULY 2023
For the first time in 2024, the majority of news websites tracked by TheRighting posted year-over-year (YOY) increases in unique visitors. Foxnews.com attracted 17.2 million more unique visitors in July 2024 compared to July 23 for a 26% increase. Several right wing news websites experienced triple-digit gains.
The three mainstream news websites TheRighting regularly follows all saw a YOY rise in unique visitors. CNN had 131,793,000 unique visitors in July, more than any other news website analyzed by TheRighting in July for a 15% YOY gain. The NY Times (+9%) and the Washington Post (+11%) also had audience increases.
“An earthquake rumbled through the national political terrain in July after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump and President Biden dropped out of the presidential race,” said Howard Polskin, President, TheRighting. “Those two dramatic events drew audiences back to news websites, reversing a year-long trend. The audience levels are still down from four years ago, but the audience erosion was halted for at least a month.”
YOY Winners and Losers Among Top 20 Right Wing News Websites for July 2024
(by unique visitor percentage increase/decrease from year ago)
Winners
–The Gateway Pundit (+304%)
–Daily Signal (+273%)
–The Washington Times (+149%)
Losers
–The Washington Examiner (-48%)
–The Epoch Times (-31%)
–TheBlaze (-25%)
TRUTH SOCIAL PULLS IN RECORD-BREAKING UNIQUE VISITORS IN JULY
The Donald Trump-controlled Truth Social platform also benefited from the robust news environment in July. YOY traffic mushroomed 136% as it attracted 5,672,000 unique visitors, the most ever since its February 2022 launch. Traffic to the platform had been decreasing the three months prior to July.
Here are the July unique visitors for the three conservative-friendly social media platforms TheRighting follows:
–Rumble (7,261,000 unique visitors; -22% vs year ago)
–Truth Social 5,672,000; +136% vs year ago)
–Gettr (215,000; -2% vs year ago)
JULY 2024 VS JULY 2020
Right wing news websites continued to experience significant audience erosion over the four-year period. The Epoch Times was the 
only outlet to post a gain of the 22 surveyed by TheRighting. Four websites suffered declines of more than 80% including TheBlaze (-81%), Western Journal (-85%), Breitbart (-92%) and The Federalist (-99%). July 2024 traffic to PJ Media and WND was so low that it could not be measured by Comscore.
Mainstream and progressive news websites also had audience declines from July 2020 to July 2024. However, they weren’t as steep as the right wing sites.
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, July 2024, U.S.
