At Polls And Online, Americans Joined Election Day Fray

Surging online activity on Election Day accompanied record voter turn-out at the polls, as voters flocked to current events and news sites to follow election results.

Web traffic to sites within the “Current Events and Global News” category was up 27% on Election Day, versus the previous Tuesday (Oct. 28), Nielsen Online reported Wednesday.

The candidates’ websites also drew healthy traffic on Election Day.  Obama’s site had 1.2 million unique visitors on Nov. 4, while McCain’s site had 479,000 unique visitors.

Rank (by Nov. 4 UA)	Website	Unique Audience: Oct. 28, 2008 (in 000s)	Unique Audience: Nov. 4, 2008 (in 000s)	% Change
1	CNN Digital Network	8,496	12,847	51%
2	MSNBC Digital Network	5,959	12,114	103%
3	Yahoo! News	7,649	11,440	50%
4	Fox News Digital Network	3,937	5,745	46%
5	AOL News	4,050	4,411	9%
6	NYTimes.com	2,480	3,501	41%
7	Google News	2,053	3,255	59%
8	Tribune Newspapers	2,717	2,911	7%
9	washingtonpost.com	1,086	2,309	113%
10	USATODAY.com	1,326	2,009	52%
Source: Nielsen Online, Custom Analysis (October 28, 2008 and November 4, 2008).

Page views and time-per-person at current events and news websites also increased 103% and 61%, respectively, on Tuesday, according to Nielsen.

	Oct. 28, 2008	Nov. 4, 2008	% Growth
Unique Audience (in 000s)	33,461	42,380	27%
Page Views (in 000s)	427,385	868,310	103%
Time per Person (hh:mm:ss)	0:12:22	0:19:51	61%
Source: Nielsen Online, Custom Analysis (October 28, 2008 and November 4, 2008).

Check out historical unique audience data from Election Day 2004.

View the full media alert.

Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings in Ad Age, Silicon Alley Insider, Mediaweek, Media Life magazine, and Direct News.