The 2024 Presidential Debate was held on September 10, with Republican candidate and former President, Donald Trump, facing off against Democrat candidate and current Vice President, Kamala Harris. An event of this magnitude is sure to affect the traffic on Pornhub, and when The New York Post asked us to provide some data, our statisticians were happy to oblige!
Shortly before the debate began at 9 p.m. EST, traffic slowly started dropping. Within the first 5 minutes it was down around –10%. By 9:36 p.m., traffic saw its largest drop of the evening, at –23.5%.
When the first commercial break occurred around 10:06 p.m., there was a +4% increase to traffic on the site. Those numbers did not drop again to what they were prior to the commercial break, they remained around the –12% mark. By the second commercial break at 10:36 p.m., there was only a decrease of about –7% below average traffic to Pornhub. It seems people had heard enough from the candidates and instead chose to relieve themselves of the tension.
When our statisticians looked at traffic decreases by state, they discovered the overall US traffic change was –14.8%. The states with the biggest drops in traffic included Maryland at –23.6%, Delaware at –22.8%, and Wisconsin at –22.6%.
The states that seemed to be the least interested in the Presidential Debate were Missouri at –4.5%, West Virginia at –4.9%, and South Carolina at –6.8%.
We hope you enjoyed this edition of the Presidential Debate Insights!