Election 2024: How Digital Publishers Can Prepare for Peak Traffic

Introduction

The upcoming 2024 U.S. election will heavily rely on digital publishers as the main source of real-time news, analysis, polls, and results for millions of voters. This election is expected to generate unprecedented levels of traffic, making publishers the primary platform that shapes public perception and enables informed decision-making. The demand for immediate updates on voting outcomes, candidate statements, and polling analysis will lead to significant spikes in traffic, often overwhelming traditional infrastructure.

Furthermore, as concerns about misinformation persist, digital publishers must maintain high standards of journalistic integrity by filtering out false claims and promoting transparency. Using advanced technology such as data-driven reporting and audience targeting will help amplify important voices, highlight critical issues, and ensure a more informed electorate throughout the 2024 election cycle.

Our second industry report focused on online publishing will examine the necessity to have a robust underlying IT infrastructure to handle enormous surges in web traffic while maintaining seamless performance. With millions of users seeking real-time updates on voting results, candidate announcements, and breaking news, any downtime or lag can lead to a loss of audience trust and engagement, as well as crucial ad revenue.

Changed Consumption Behavior

The 2024 U.S. election is anticipated to bring about a significant increase in real-time news consumption as millions of people turn to digital publishers for up-to-the-minute coverage. Elections are crucial news events that result in a surge in demand for instant information as results are announced, debates and analysis occur, and breaking news takes precedence. This surge in traffic places unprecedented pressure on publishers to deliver accurate and timely content without delays or interruptions. As voters and observers seek continuous updates, publishers must balance the need for speed with the reliability of their IT infrastructure to ensure their platforms can handle sudden spikes in user activity. 

Changes in audience behavior have impacted the way people consume election news. Users increasingly rely on mobile devices, live-streaming, and social media for their election coverage. Mobile consumption, in particular, continues to experience rapid growth as more users seek updates regardless of their location. Live-streaming platforms enable voters to watch real-time updates and commentary, creating a dynamic and engaging experience. Social media also plays a central role, with users sharing updates, clips, and live reports across platforms. This shift toward multi-platform and real-time engagement requires digital publishers to adapt their content and IT strategies to meet audience expectations across many channels.

Furthermore, the 2024 election is likely to attract increased global attention, with international observers closely following U.S. politics. The massive global audience presents unique challenges for U.S.-based publishers, who must manage domestic traffic surges and a broader worldwide influx of users. CDNs and cloud services will be essential to efficiently distribute this traffic efficiently, ensuring that all users—whether in the U.S. or abroad—experience the same level of speed and access. The challenge for digital publishers lies in preparing for this diverse and widespread audience, highlighting the importance of a robust and scalable infrastructure to handle the complexities of a global election event.

Navigating Publishing’s IT Infrastructure Challenges

Online publishers will face significant IT and infrastructure challenges during the 2024 U.S. election, especially when dealing with the "Thundering Herd" phenomenon. This refers to sudden, massive spikes in web traffic as millions of users flock to a site simultaneously for breaking news or live updates. During such high-profile moments, websites can easily become overwhelmed by the sheer number of visitors, leading to slowdowns, outages, or crashes. For publishers, this can result in lost audience trust and missed opportunities for engagement at a critical time.

The strain on servers, networks, and databases is a primary concern during such events. When traffic spikes, every part of the infrastructure—from the front-end servers to the back-end databases—can experience intense pressure. Servers may run out of memory or processing capacity, networks may become congested, and databases can struggle to handle an influx of simultaneous read and write requests. This can lead to delayed page loading times, incomplete data retrieval, or even full system failures. To combat this, digital publishers need to optimize their database architectures, implement robust load-balancing systems, and ensure their network bandwidth is capable of handling peak demand. Efficient caching strategies can also help by reducing the number of direct database queries and speeding up content delivery.

Additionally, API limits and third-party dependencies pose another layer of complexity. News websites rely on external services for key features like live data feeds, ads, or social media integrations, often accessed through APIs. During times of high traffic, these APIs become bottlenecks if they cannot handle the increased load or their service providers impose rate limits. This can disrupt critical services, causing features to malfunction or slow down, further degrading the user experience. To mitigate these risks, publishers must work with their service providers to ensure higher API thresholds during major events and consider implementing fallback systems or in-house solutions to reduce their dependency on third-party services during peak periods.

How a CDN Can Help Ensure Success

In the 2024 presidential election context, CDNs play a crucial role in enabling digital publishers to manage the significant increases in online traffic. With millions of people visiting, CDNs act as a buffer between these surges in traffic and the publisher's core infrastructure. By caching and distributing content across a global network of servers, CDNs reduce the strain on the origin servers, minimizing the risk of overload and ensuring that content remains accessible even during peak periods. This efficient distribution of traffic across multiple geographic locations is essential for preventing performance issues and providing a seamless user experience, particularly when the election captures audiences' attention worldwide.

A key feature of CDNs is load balancing combined with auto-scaling solutions, which are essential for managing real-time traffic spikes during election coverage. Load balancing distributes incoming traffic across multiple servers, preventing any single server from becoming overwhelmed and failing. Auto-scaling further enhances this by automatically increasing server capacity during traffic surges and scaling it down when the demand decreases. These solutions ensure that a website can adapt to changing traffic conditions without human intervention, which is vital during unpredictable events like the release of election results, debates, or breaking news. By utilizing these features, digital publishers can maintain performance, prevent downtime, and provide their audience with up-to-the-second election coverage without interruption.

Another significant advantage of CDNs is the integration of edge computing, which brings data processing closer to the user, reducing latency and enhancing the speed at which content is delivered. In the context of the 2024 election, when users expect instantaneous updates, every millisecond counts. Edge computing allows data to be processed at the network’s edge—closer to where users are located—rather than traveling to the origin server. This dramatically reduces the time it takes to load content, especially for video streams, live updates, and other resource-heavy media. For digital publishers, delivering election results and breaking news without delay is crucial in maintaining their audience’s trust, engagement, and ranking during critical moments of the election cycle.

In summary, CDNs are indispensable for modern digital publishers, especially during high-stakes events like the election. Their role in mitigating traffic spikes, managing real-time load balancing, and utilizing edge computing to reduce latency allows publishers to provide fast, reliable, and uninterrupted content, despite overwhelming demand. A CDN provides scalability and reliability, ensuring that content such as live video streams, updates, and election results can efficiently deliver without interruptions. Traffic spikes during such events can be unpredictable and intense, requiring a robust CDN to mitigate issues like latency, server overloads, and downtime.

An optimized CDN distributes content across multiple servers worldwide, reducing the load on origin servers and ensuring that users receive timely, localized access to information. Additionally, CDNs enhance security by preventing DDoS attacks and other potential disruptions, which is critical for maintaining the integrity of high-stakes events. In summary, having a robust CDN infrastructure is essential to ensure seamless, secure, and timely content delivery during high-traffic periods, enabling platforms to meet the demands of global audiences.

Preparing for November 5: Recommendations for Digital Publishers

As the 2024 presidential election approaches, digital publishers must prepare their IT infrastructure to handle the high traffic expected during such a high-profile event. One key strategy is to adopt best practices for IT scaling and traffic load distribution. This involves implementing a flexible, cloud-based infrastructure that can automatically scale in response to spikes in demand. Auto-scaling ensures that server capacity expands during traffic surges and contracts during slower periods, maintaining efficiency while preventing overloads. Additionally, load-balancing systems are essential for distributing incoming traffic across multiple servers, preventing any single point of failure. By decentralizing the load, publishers can ensure continuous performance even when millions of users access their site simultaneously for real-time election updates.

The use of AI and machine learning is also becoming increasingly important for digital publishers in managing election-related traffic. AI can predict traffic surges based on historical data, user behavior, and social media trends. For example, machine learning algorithms can analyze previous election data and identify patterns in traffic spikes, enabling publishers to proactively allocate resources before critical moments like debate nights, poll closings, or breaking news announcements. AI-driven insights can also help optimize resource allocation in real-time, ensuring that server capacity is dynamically adjusted as needed and that high-demand content is delivered efficiently. This predictive approach allows publishers to be more responsive and adaptive, minimizing downtime and improving the overall user experience.

Partnering with CDN providers should be an essential strategy for digital publishers preparing for the 2024 election. CDNs offer dynamic content delivery by caching and distributing website assets across a global network of servers. By collaborating with a CDN, publishers can enhance their ability to deliver fast, reliable content to users worldwide, even during peak election moments. This partnership is critical for ensuring the seamless distribution of real-time election results, live video streams, and breaking news updates to a global audience.

Conclusion

As we anticipate the 2024 presidential election, online news outlets will have a vital role in supporting democracy by providing real-time news and keeping the public informed. With millions of voters and global observers relying on up-to-the-minute election updates, the ability of these publishers to deliver timely, accurate information has never been more crucial. Digital news platforms are the primary source of election coverage, from live results and candidate updates to breaking stories and in-depth analysis. Their ability to handle massive traffic surges, especially during key moments such as debate nights and election results, is essential for maintaining public trust and engagement in the electoral process.

However, the technical challenges that lie ahead of the 2024 election underscore the need for long-term infrastructure considerations that extend beyond just this one event. While publishers must be prepared for the peak traffic associated with election night, they also need to build scalable and resilient systems for future events, whether political, sports-related, or cultural. Investment in cloud-based, auto-scaling architectures, advanced load balancing, and edge computing will continue to be essential as the digital landscape evolves and users expect increasingly rapid, reliable access to information. These upgrades will ensure seamless election coverage and position publishers for success in managing traffic spikes during other high-profile events.

By investing in resilient IT infrastructure, digital publishers can maintain their role as trusted sources of election information during one of the highest-stakes events in modern democracy.