Majority of Right Wing News Websites Grew Audience in October
November 26, 2024, New York, NY – TheRighting released its October 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 October 2024 findings:
ANOTHER MONTH OF DOUBLE-DIGIT TRAFFIC GROWTH FOR TRUTH SOCIAL
For the fourth consecutive month, the Donald Trump-controlled Truth Social platform generated significant year-over-year (YOY) increases in unique visitors
“Truth Social’s string of consecutive months with year-over-year traffic increases suggest that audiences were warming to the messaging of Mr. Trump and his fellow travelers who flocked to his platform in the presidential campaign’s final months,” said Howard Polskin, President, The Righting.
Here are the October 2024 unique visitors for the three conservative-friendly social media platforms TheRighting follows:
–Rumble (6,828,000 unique visitors; +3% vs year ago)
–Truth Social (4,282,000; +19% vs year ago)
–Gettr: for the second time since TheRighting has been tracking social media, Gettr’s audience was so small that it could not be measured by Comscore.
OCTOBER 2024 VS OCTOBER 2023
For the first time in 2024, the majority of right wing news websites generated gains in October YOY traffic. Foxnews.com had its fourth successive month of increased traffic posting a 2% uptick. The Murdoch-controlled site topped all right wing news websites with 83,643,000 unique visitors.
Two of the three mainstream news websites TheRighting regularly follows all experienced traffic growth in October. Unique visitors to the NY Times increased 8% in October while the Washington Post saw its YOY unique visitors rise 5%. YOY unique visitors to CNN dropped 11%.
“The final weeks of the presidential election helped drive year-over-year gains for the majority of news websites on both sides of the aisle in October,” said Polskin. “This was a positive development for the news business considering that the Hamas surprise invasion of Israel and its bloody aftermath drove the news cycle in October 2023 and kept audiences riveted to their screens.”
YOY Winners and Losers Among Top 20 Right Wing News Websites for October 2024
(by unique visitor percentage increase/decrease from year ago)
Winners
–The Gateway Pundit (+249%)
–Washington Times (+87%)
–Infowars (+51%)
Losers
–Daily Signal (-90%)
–Townhall (-78%)
–Washington Examiner (-54%)
OCTOBER 2024 VS OCTOBER 2020
Of the 21 news websites monitored by TheRighting during this period, only Newsmax posted an increase in traffic. In the election year month of October 2020, Newsmax attracted 3,596,000 unique visitors. Four years later, that number surged to 4,876,000, a rise of 36%. Nine right wing websites saw their unique visitors plunge 50% or more.
Traffic to mainstream and progressive news websites also sagged during this period, although not as much.
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, October 2024, U.S.
