Noa Shavit

Jumpshot’s analysis of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Elections continues with a second in-depth data-driven investigation of Americans’ online lives. I analyzed U.S voters’ online searching, browsing and information seeking behaviors in an attempt to identify the relationship between online activity and predictive polls. My ultimate goal was to understand if online behavior can predict the actual behavior, and if so can it predict the next President of the United States?

Read on for my findings.

Top Takeaways Overall, direct traffic continues to be the leading traffic source for presidential hopefuls. This month, direct traffic accounts for roughly 65 percent of the total traffic to candidate websites, with search and referral traffic accounting for the remaining 35 percent.

As for the candidates, Sanders retains the lead for all traffic channels with an average of just under 32 percent of the search, referral and direct traffic to all candidate websites. Carson is- surprisingly- a close second, with an average of 26 percent of the total traffic to candidate sites. Clinton takes third place with slightly more than 14 percent of the incoming traffic. And Trump falls to fourth with a little over 10 percent of the traffic.

News Traffic is Gaining Momentum Social media is the main driving force for referral traffic to candidate websites, accounting for 68 percent of the referral traffic. Twitter and YouTube are neck-to-neck for the lead, bringing in 26 percent and 25 percent of the social traffic, respectively. An honorable mention goes out to 75-year-old Sanders who’s dominating millennial beloved YouTube, driving more than 2.5 times the amount of referrals as Trump, the YouTube referral runner up.

Social networks maintain their supreme regime over referral traffic, but news websites are gaining strength. Compared to the last month , social referrals to candidate sites declined by 8 percent, while news referrals increased by an astonishing 46 percent . The leading news publications to display this increase in referrals is The New York Times, with a 92 percent increase in the amount of voters sent to candidate campaign sites. Fox News comes in second with an 86 percent month-over-month increase. And third place goes to Politics1 with a 75 percent increase in referring voters to candidate website.

Leading Candidates Based on the Media

Based on Jumpshot’s data news referrals account for 37 percent of the total referral traffic to candidate sites, with social networks accounting for 63 percent. In the always-connected digital era this in itself is not surprising, but the 1.53 monthly growth rate of news referrals is. Last month, online news websites drove just under a quarter of the total referral traffic.

Sanders is also in the lead for news traffic, enjoying roughly 30 percent of the total news referrals to candidate websites. Sanders’ main source for news referrals is The New York Times. Clinton comes in second with 15 percent of the news referrals, largely driven by Politics1. And a close third goes to Carson, with 13.5 percent of the news traffic, mainly from Republican-inclined Fox News.

Bottom line: Bernie Sanders takes the lead for referral traffic, dominating with 64 percent of social traffic and 28 percent of news referrals. Hillary Clinton comes in second, with 13 percent of social referrals and 19 percent of news traffic. Ben Carson enters the top three due to recent press coverage that drove nearly 15 percent of the overall news referrals to his website.

There are many ways to interpret online behavior and traffic trends. Just because someone visits a candidate’s website doesn’t mean they are planning on voting for him or her. However, one thing is clear and that is that a solid social media strategy will increase candidate visibility. Another takeaway is that news publications will grow in importance for online traffic as the race to Capitol Hill picks up speed.

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Noa Shavit is the Content Marketing Manager at Jumpshot , a Marketing Analytics platform that supplies you with a full picture of consumers’ online lives: what they’re searching for, where they go, what they do there and how they get from place to place.

Noa Shavit

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Sync Computing

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Tel Aviv University

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