The Hill adds interactive election tools to subscription offering ahead of the midterms

Instead of putting content behind a paywall, The Hill’s subscription offering gives readers access to additional tools, such as newsletters, live interactive video calls where subscribers can ask questions, and other premium features. Called Hill Insider, the basic membership tier costs $5.99 per month and the premium tier costs $9.99 per month. 

“We were not going to just take everything that we provide every day to our readers and our viewers and just say, we’re putting everything behind the paywall. To the contrary, we kept virtually everything outside the paywall. But we set about to create a new body of content, a value-added body of content that would really serve as the [policy and politics] super fans,” said Bill Sammon, svp of Washington, D.C. editorial content at The Hill. “In the interest of diversifying revenue streams, I think it makes sense… If you can have good journalism, and you can also diversify your revenue stream, that’s a win-win.”

The Hill’s subscribers can now access its Decision Desk HQ’s election data tools, as part of an expansion of its longstanding partnership with the election data and analytics company. Subscribers can dig into polls, local races, prediction models and other election data.

The move points to a broader strategy: turning readers’ appetite for specialized political information – especially around a major news event like the midterm elections – into recurring revenue. The Hill is testing whether premium data and tools can support a sustainable subscription business. Other publishers are pursuing similar opportunities, including CNN, which recently expanded its subscription service to the U.K. and Canada.

Sammon declined to share the total number of subscribers. The Hill Insider has seen a “strong early conversion rate,” with more than 75% of trial members converting to paid subscribers, he said. For now, Sammon sees the subscription business as additive to The Hill’s other revenue streams, including its events, and direct and programmatic sales. Diversification is a way to insulate The Hill from being “at the mercy of the algo gods,” Sammon said.

In the thick of election season, politicai publishers are facing mounting pressure to capitalize on the traffic boost they’ve seen in previous election cycles. But declines in site visitors suggest that the expected election-year bump may be harder to come by this time around.

The Hill’s deduplicated desktop and mobile web audience in September 2026 was down 2.9% year over year to 9.6 million U.S. visitors, according to Similarweb’s most recent data shared with Digiday. However, The Hill is faring better than other politics sites — Politico was down 49.1% and Axios was down 48.8% year over year in unique visitors.

The Hill fared better when looking at desktop and mobile site visits, up 3.2% year over year in September. Politico was down 44.1% and Axios was down 47.1% year over year, according to Similarweb.

“The changes with the algorithms, changes with AI summaries of stories, the changes in page view count, all of those things factored into our decision to do some other things,” Sammon said. “We did this to make sure we’re covered.”

Arvid Tchivzhel, svp of the digital consulting practice at Mather Economics, a firm that helps publishers develop consumer revenue strategies, pointed to a 2020 report showing that interest in election coverage begins to rise in October and peaks in November. Election content that appears on the path to conversion more than triples from 6% in September to a peak of 19% in October, according to the report.

“I am not surprised that September was not as strong,” Tchivzhel said. “It could be that interest shifts from an existing audience rather than attracting new audience during election season. Another theory is we are seeing more and more the disintermediation of the legacy news brand from its audience as platforms and LLMs capture the audience relationship.”

Access to many of Decision Desk HQ’s more premium election data and tools are typically reserved for paying users, most of whom are professional data analysts, but The Hill’s subscribers will get those tools opened up to them, Sammon explained. They can track specific races, customize their dashboards and explore election trends. Engagement with the Decision Desk HQ’s election data tools has been “encouraging,” with page views, visits and unique visitors all trending up, Sammon said.

After the midterms, The Hill plans on adding more interactive elements to its subscription offering, Sammon said. The Hill is also looking for partnerships to expand and drive its subscription business, which for now Sammon said is “just gravy,” and isn’t yet factored into The Hill’s budgets.

“You always have to be offering more. You can’t be static. You can’t be stagnant. You have to be adding material,” Sammon said.