Yahoo News reports that new data from the analytics firm SimilarWeb reveals that the Democratic presidential candidates drawing the most traffic to their campaign websites are Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Andrew Yang.
Sanders has the most with 12.7 of the total traffic of the 20 candidates, with 1.82 million visits to berniesanders.com . Warren is in 2nd with 8.6 percent of the total traffic, or 1.24 million visits, to elizabethwarren.com . Finally, Yang has 6.1 percent of the total traffic, or 875,000 visits, to yang2020.com .
After the top three are candidates Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, and Pete Buttigieg.
Sanders and Warren are both frontrunners in the Democratic presidential race. RealClearPolitics puts Sanders at 16.2 percent average poll support and Warren with 14.3 percent average poll support. Yang has an average of 1.8 percent poll support, which is a long way from the top but impressive given his lack of political experience.
“For me, Yang is a surprise,” Pascal Cohen, the head of solution implementation and engineering for North America at SimilarWeb, said of Yang’s web traffic. “Yang is ranked third which is a big surprise that he is generating so much traffic and voter attention. Here he is as a newcomer basically competing against hard seasoned Democrats.”
But Yang’s campaign spokesman Randy Jones isn’t surprised.
“We are on message. That is the power of the Yang gang right there.”
— Andrew Yang????? (@AndrewYang) July 30, 2019
Although Yang saw a boost of 69 percent traffic the day after the debates compared to the day before, it wasn’t as large as other candidates like Harris, who saw a 382 percent jump, and Buttigieg, who experienced a 294 percent jump. But while Harris and Buttigieg’s web traffic has slowed heading into the second debates, Yang’s is picking up steam, suggesting that whatever his campaign strategy is, it’s focusing on the long-term, and it’s working.
“Clearly the candidate, the teams [sic] message and our strategy are working very well and we are proud of it,” Jones said. “I am glad people are picking up on this we’ve known about it for quite some time.
As for Sanders and Warren, they recently had their second debate performance Tuesday and were the focus of attacks from the other candidates. At one point, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Sanders about his Medicare-for-all proposal and its potential to become a talking point of President Donald Trump’s campaign. Vox reports that Sanders hit back and accused Tapper of framing the question around a “Republican talking point.”
“And by the way, the health care industry will be advertising tonight on this program,” he added.
