Visits to Newsmax’s website surged 330% in November, according to a new analysis.
According to a Comscore analysis by The Righting, which monitors online traffic to right-leaning media sites, Newsmax was in second place to Fox News, but Fox News was still the winner by a long shot.
Overall, Comscore data indicates that Newsmax pulled in 13.378 million unique visitors in November. Fox News, by comparison, had 129.851 million in first place while the third-place finisher, the Washington Examiner, had 11.393 million.
December numbers won’t be available for a few more weeks, so it’s not clear if the trend will hold. Newsmax saw a viewership spike around its television offerings the week of the election, as outgoing president Donald Trump directed viewers there because they were the only network not to call the race for President-elect Joe Biden.
It’s 183% viewership increase in mid-November was notable because Newsmax had particularly poor ratings last summer, when it was first accepted by Nielsen for ratings data compilation. Even with the election week bump, Newsweek still lagged behind the major cable networks.
Howard Polskin, who curates The Righting and keeps tabs on conservative sites’ Comscore data, said in a statement Wednesday that for now, Newsmax’s “strategy of positioning itself to the right of Fox News appears to be working in the post-election environment.”
One person who has taken notice of the hard-right angle is Trump himself, who repeated Tuesday night a false claim made by a Newsweek guest during the network’s 7 p.m. hour. Trump lashed out at Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger Tuesday night for not investigating his baseless claims of voter fraud in the state. In his attack, Trump went after “Brad R’s brother.” Raffensperger does not have a brother.
The claim that Raffensperger has a brother who works for China was first made on Newsmax Tuesday evening. The network gave a statement to TheWrap distancing itself from the false assertion, saying while the guest’s “claim was apparently inaccurate,” the conservative commentary channel “has never made any claim of impropriety by Georgia Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger or any member of his family.”