Americans can’t seem to stop reading about former President Donald Trump.
The 77-year-old is riding a wave of earned media to the top of the 2024 Republican primary polls.
According to data from tracking firm Memo, articles about the 45th president received 30% of readership between Sep. 10 and Oct. 7. Stories about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis received a 14.3% readership share, while pieces about former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley got 5% of readers.
President Biden is the only 2024 candidate who eclipses Trump, earning 34.7% of readership share in the same time frame.
The most-read Trump stories concern the ongoing court cases against him, as well as the legal question of whether he should be barred from running for president again.
Articles about DeSantis saw large spikes in readership share around the time Hurricane Idalia hit the Sunshine State in late August, and articles about all GOP candidates experienced a surge in attention during the first two Republican debates on Aug. 23 and Sept. 27.
The Memo survey tracks the number of unique visitors to a sample of articles from 80 national and large regional outlets for seven days following publication. Articles must mention a candidate’s name in the headline or at least twice in the body text.
“Most articles receive traffic within the first three or four days of publication, which is why Memo tracks readership for seven days following publication,” VP of Insights Allison Horton told The Post.
“In some cases, readership measures a more deliberate engagement than TV – a reader must click on an article to view and read it, whereas TV consumption can be more passive.”
The former president has enjoyed widespread media coverage since his successful 2016 run for the White House, and his campaign knows he can get attention as needed.
“No one dominates news coverage like Donald Trump. I feel bad for the other candidates. Running against Trump is a futile effort,” one Republican working on Trump’s 2024 campaign told The Post.
The media spotlight — especially the Trump campaign’s recent strategy of painting him as a “martyr” in the face of his four upcoming criminal trials– is critical in getting to the top of the polls, said GOP strategist John Thomas.
“One of Trump’s key strengths since 2016 has been an innate ability to remain relevant and dominate earned media and this cycle appears to be no different,” Thomas said. “Even though Trump doesn’t have the power of incumbency to do that like he did in 2020, he still is effectively doing that and in an essence is doing that as a martyr.”
“Anytime he has one more lawsuit, one more action, it ends up being a great thing for him in the media,” said Republican strategist Dave Wilson. “And that’s why I think you see Donald Trump so high in the numbers, because he is remaining and keeping himself as part of the story.”
“This is tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising value equivalency,” Wilson said of Memo’s findings. “That is, if you actually had to pay for the media, this is how much it would cost you.”
The earned media standings largely correspond to the national polling pecking order in the Republican primary, according to Real Clear Politics. Trump is the clear frontrunner in the polls, getting 59.1% support compared to DeSantis’ 12.8%.
