Web traffic—and spam—increased during 2024 DNC

The Democratic National Convention might be over, but the party lingers online.

Interest surrounding Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential candidacy both inspired searches for fundraising sites and gave potential scammers another new avenue for exploitation, according to data from digital services firm Cloudflare.

In a blog post, the company noted “a rise in [Domain Name System] traffic for Harris/Democrats fundraising domains” on night four of the convention, right as Vice President Kamala Harris was set to speak. Visits to fundraising sites saw “a 493% increase compared to the previous week,” Cloudflare said, and “daily traffic increased by 92% compared to the previous week.​”

While Cloudflare didn’t observe sharp fluctuations in internet usage during the convention, which ran from Aug. 15 to 22, the political activity in the Windy City did bring out some night owls. Chicago-area web traffic during the event was “10% to 20% higher after midnight compared to the previous week,” Cloudflare reported.

Users also turned to news sites as the DNC unfolded, spiking traffic to US news organizations by 11% on the first day when President Joe Biden took the stage, and continuing at 10% the second night when former President Barack Obama spoke. By the time VP candidate Tim Walz and Harris took the lectern on nights three and four, users sent US news site visits soaring by 21% and 28%, respectively.

Of course, all the fanfare also caught the attention of digital ne’er-do-wells, who attempted to capitalize on the political uncertainty after Biden dropped out of the race with spam emails. Cloudflare reported that, since July 21, just over one-third of emails with Trump’s name in the subject line were spam, and 3% were malicious. “For Kamala Harris, 0.8% were spam and 0.2% were malicious, while Biden’s figures were 1.1% for spam and 0.1% for malicious,” Cloudflare said.

The company also tracked internet traffic trends during the Republican National Convention in July, finding that visits to political fundraising sites similarly spiked.