The 2024 US presidential election has been concluded, with Donald Trump defeating his opponent Kamala Harris in a decisive 312 to 226 Electoral College victory. This outcome marks Trump’s return to presidency as the United States’ 47th president.

With the US presidential election being one of the world’s most recognised and globally reported events, Australian and U.K. news portals have also devoted extensive coverage to this topic. In this article, we will take a close look at the performance of the top publishers in those countries, who achieved the highest visibility values in the Mobile News Boxes, both during the election week from 4 to 10 November 2024, as well as on election day itself.
The basis of this analysis is an election-specific set of keywords we have tracked with the Trisolute News Dashboard for both countries. Additionally, we will examine which topics Google put in the spotlight on election day, by looking at the top trending topics from Google Trends and Google News.

U.K.

The previously created keyword cluster with the most important keywords related to the 2024 US election includes the following:

Most visible publishers during the election week

Based on the above-mentioned keyword cluster, the U.K.’s top ten publishers’ visibility during the election-week looks as follows:

Based on the visibility of the entire election week period, the following publishers have emerged as the top three best performing:

1. theguardian.com – With a high number of rankings, The Guardian sets itself apart from the competition in terms of Google visibility for the majority of the election-week. With its peak on election day itself, The Guardian’s visibility continuously decreases until its pole position is finally taken by The Independent on 9 November.
2. independent.co.uk – Other than with The Guardian, Independent’s visibility rises in the aftermath of election day. On 7 November, it reaches its preliminary peak before dropping slightly on 8 November, only to skyrocket on November 9 and surpassing The Guardian in its visibility.
3. bbc.co.uk – The BBC’s visibility remains relatively steady throughout the week, with there only being a very slight downward-tendency starting on 7 November, having it end up in 6th place at the end of the election-week.

Also among the top ten best performing publishers are sky.com, telegraph.co.uk, bbc.com, cnn.com, aljazeera.com, nbcnews.com and nytimes.com.

Visibility in the Mobile News Boxes for the 2024 US election keywords on election day

Let’s now have a closer look at the election day on 5 November itself. Because of the time difference between the U.S. and the U.K., the official announcement of Donald Trump’s victory took place on the morning of 6 November U.K.-time, which is why this day is included in the graph below. For a more detailed analysis, we will examine the course of visibility in hourly sections, as well as only including the top five publishers.

In this case, theguardian.com stands out as the clear winner. Leading up to the time of the first polls opening at 12 p.m. U.K.-time on 5 November, its visibility rises continuously and remains relatively steady until the first polls close at 11 p.m. Throughout the votes being counted during nighttime, the now slightly lower visibility still remains steadily in first place, with the only exception being 6 a.m., where independent.co.uk briefly takes over for an hour. By the time it is announced that Kamala Harris will not be able to gather enough votes to beat Donald Trump in the presidential race at 11 a.m. on 6 November, The Guardian’s visibility seems to only be slightly rising, with a very prominent peak happening at the end of the day at 10 p.m.
Second place goes to independent.co.uk, though up until the time the first polls close, it fights a head-to-head battle with bbc.co.uk in terms of visibility. From this point on, independent.co.uk slightly rises in its visibility, with its clear peak being at 6 a.m. while bbc.co.uk‘s visibility remains steady with a slight downward tendency. Places four and five go to sky.com and bbc.com respectively.

Top five keywords on election day

Looking at the general keywords that were most visible during the above shown time period rather than the preset keyword cluster, the following five keywords and their respective number of rankings (a.k.a. keywords appearing in Mobile News Boxes that are tracked every 15 minutes) emerge:

1. joe biden (797 total rankings)
2. trump (614 total rankings)
3. election (538 total rankings)
4. donald trump (534 total rankings)
5. us election (525 total rankings)

Australia

Australian publishers and readers also actively followed the 2024 US presidential election. Let’s take a look at the keyword cluster that was previously created for our Australian analysis of the event:

Most visible publishers during the election week

Based on those keywords, the top ten publishers in Australia and their course of visibility from 4 November to 10 November looks as follows:

Throughout the election week, the following publishers have stood out as the top three performers in terms of visibility:

1. abc.net.au – This publisher marks the clear first place here, with the other publishers not once coming close to its number of visibility. abc.com.au‘s course of visibility clearly shows an incline after the polls open in the night from 5 to 6 November Australian time and an even steeper one when Trump’s presidency was confirmed after.
2. theguardian.com – Second place goes to theguardian.com. This publisher’s visibility stays slightly more steady, with there only being a decline 0n 8 November.
3. smh.com.au – In third place is smh.com.au, who seems to decline in its visibility during election day but sees its peak on 8 November, where it shortly surges into second place.

Included among the top ten highest-performing publishers are also news.com.au, skynews.com.au, cnn.com, nbcnews.com, theage.com.au and nytimes.com.

Visibility in the Mobile News Boxes for the 2024 US election keywords on election day

As with the previous analysis of U.K. publishers, we will now have a more detailed look at election day itself for Australia. With Australian Eastern Time being 16 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, and the election ‘day’ therefore essentially spreading over three different dates in Australia, it only seems logical to look at the time-range from 5 November to 7 November in this case.

In first place, abc.net.au shows a constant increase in visibility starting in the night from 5 to 6 November, where the opening of the polls took place. Another quite obvious surge in visibility can then be seen after the winner has been determined at around 10 p.m. Australian time on 6 November for that publisher. In second place, theguardian.com‘s visibility shows a similar route, although after their surge at the time of Trump’s win, their visibility decreases around midday of 7 November. Third place goes to smh.com.au, who seem to have their peak in visibility in the preliminary reporting of election day. After that, this publisher’s visibility steadily decreases and is overrun by the competitive publishers’. Fourth place goes to 9news.com.au while news.com.au takes fifth place.

Top five keywords on election day

1. us election (1,129 total rankings)
2. election (1,110 total rankings)
3. trump (1,083 total rankings)
4. donald trump (673 total rankings)
5. harris (335 total rankings)

Final Thoughts:

Check out our other articles we have written on the topic of the 2024 US presidential election:

• A helpful guide on how to handle an event like the US election as a newsroom
• An election day analysis for U.S. publishers
• An analysis of the top publishers from Germany and Switzerland surrounding the election (in German)

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