Presidential candidate endorsements boost subscriber conversions and donations at some publishers

In response to The Washington Post and the LA Times’ announcements, the Guardian’s editor in chief Betsy Reed sent an email to readers on Oct. 25 to recommit the editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris for president.

By Oct. 28, U.S. readers had pledged roughly $1.8 million to the Guardian, according to a company spokesperson. The Guardian brought in $485,000 in reader donations that Friday, a U.S. daily fundraising record. Saturday brought in even more — $619,000 in reader donations.

The conversion rate among people who visited the Guardian’s support page and then contributed to the Guardian U.S. jumped five-times from the average daily conversion rate in October over the weekend to about 26%, the spokesperson said.

Revenue generated from the Guardian’s site was up six-times “normal levels,” the spokesperson said, from modules like buttons, banners and headers asking for support. The top three converting stories in the U.S. were all related to decisions by The Washington Post and LA Times, they added.

When asked what she thought led to the boost in conversions and donations, Emilie Harkin, svp of growth for the Guardian US said in an emailed statement, “The Guardian has always talked about its unique ownership structure: no billionaire owner, no shareholders, funded by readers. We often hear from readers that protecting this editorial independence is a primary motivation to support us, and this is especially true in consequential moments like this one.”

After publishing its endorsement of Harris on Oct. 25, The Philadelphia Inquirer gained over 4,200 new digital subscribers, “about three times a typical week for us and our biggest week of new starts ever,” Inquirer publisher and CEO Lisa Hughes said in an emailed statement. The Inquirer also saw “a bump” in individual donations to its journalism fund with The Lenfest Institute, she added. Donations to The Inquirer’s High-Impact Journalism Fund are up about 15% since the endorsement, according to a company spokesperson, without providing exact figures.

The Atlantic seemed to catch on, too. The publisher re-sent its endorsement of Harris — originally published on Oct. 10 — in an email to readers on Tuesday. An Atlantic spokesperson said the email was sent as part of the publisher’s ongoing election subscription campaign, and The Atlantic has seen “strong conversions” both at the time of the original publication and now, they added, without giving exact figures.

In the 2020 election cycle, digital consulting practice Mather Economics found presidential candidate endorsements attributed to over 5% of the content that led readers to convert to subscribers, and nearly one quarter of the path to conversion for all election-related content, based on findings pulled from its Listener First Party Data Platform tracking over 200 U.S. local news websites, said Arvid Tchivzhel, svp of product at Mather Economics.

Meanwhile, The Post reportedly lost over 200,000 subscribers after its editorial board announced it would not endorse a candidate this year, according to NPR reporting, representing about 8% of its 2.5 million total subscriber base. The Post’s own media reporter Elahe Izadi wrote on Tuesday that at least 250,000 Washington Post readers have canceled their subscriptions, representing 10% of The Post’s digital subscribers.

And the LA Times lost more than 7,000 of its less than 400,000 digital subscribers as of Monday, according to a Times report, which was confirmed to Digiday by a company spokesperson. (Semafor’s Max Tani posted on X that the impact was even more dramatic, with the LA Times losing over 14,000 subscribers in a week.) The Washington Post did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

While The New York Times also endorsed Harris in an announcement published on Sept. 30, a month prior the publisher’s editorial board decided it would no longer endorse candidates in local elections. The New York Times declined to comment on what led to this decision or whether it affected subscription figures.