The UK may have had its first change of ruling party in 14 years, but it appears Brits are far more engaged in the race for the White House. Readership trend data from Taboola reveals Brits were more than four times as likely to read about Trump being shot than the results of the UK’s general election.

Donald Trump attracted 10.8 million page views on the day of his shooting, while the General Election saw only 2.5 million on July 5. UK readers were even less keen to read about the election on the day itself, with just 1.4 million page views on July 4.

Publishers saw almost four times as much election-related traffic when Joe Biden announced he was pulling out of the race, with 5.3 million views as his stepping down paved the way for Kamala Harris to become the Democratic Party’s frontrunner.

Taboola’s Newsroom findings are in line with other research that points to a lack of enthusiasm for local politics among the Great British public. A report released by the Institute for Public Policy Research think tank after the General Election noted that almost half of the UK’s adults didn’t even bother to vote. It said that at 52%, the share of the population who turned out to vote was at the lowest level since universal suffrage.

Taboola has analysed readership trends across its network of UK media publishers from July to identify what Brits were most interested in.

These data show that:

• Donald Trump saw 10.8m page views on July 14, the day of his shooting
• There were 5.3m page views related to ‘election’ on July 21, when Biden pulled out, but only 2.5m the day after the UK General Election
• Brits were more interested in Trump and Biden than the Euros, which attracted its higher number of page views, 4.4m, on July 15, the day after the final
• The highest number of page views for Keir Starmer during the month was 1.8m on July 5, the day after the General Election 
• Joe Biden saw 6.1m page views on July 21, the day he withdrew from the Presidential race
• The highest number of page views for Kamala Harris was 3.3m on July 22, the day after Biden’s withdrawal.

Dave Struzzi, communications lead, Taboola said: "Taboola’s data for the past month shows that Brits seem to be far more interested in the outcome of the US election than they were in the General Election in the UK. It has obviously been a very dramatic race, one full of twists and turns, and it’s not over yet. This is undoubtedly partly behind the fascination with news about the US race for the White House.

"However, voter turnout figures suggest the general public may also have lost interest in British politics, at least to some degree."

Taboola

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