Pornhub traffic skyrocketed the morning of Election Day

Pornhub is one of the top-visited websites in the world. So, performing their civic duty on Election Day doesn’t stop Americans from watching explicit content.

It seems that the U.S. (at least, half the states where Pornhub isn’t blocked) woke up with an insatiable urge to watch porn, as traffic at 5 a.m. was 22 percent higher on Nov. 3 compared to an average day. (All visitor times are adjusted by local time, according to Pornhub.) The above-average numbers continued until around 4 p.m., before most polls closed.

For the next couple of hours, traffic dipped at most 10 percent below average. In the early evening, perhaps after many people voted, it rose up again to slightly above average. By 10 p.m., though, it was back down — maybe because they were watching Steve Kornacki deliver the election results instead.

Pornhub has blocked itself in many states due to age-verification laws, so there’s no data on whether people in key battlegrounds like Georgia, Texas, Florida, and the Carolinas opted to watch porn on Tuesday.

But in Washington, D.C., Pornhub traffic was a staggering 43 percent higher than average in the morning and 25 percent in the afternoon, suggesting that political staffers may have had to let off a little steam. (It’s less staggering than in 2022, however, when Pornhub traffic doubled in D.C.)

Wisconsin also saw a bigger-than-average day on Pornhub, with 20 percent higher traffic in the morning and 16 percent in the afternoon. Michigan and Ohio, with their highly-watched races, saw modest increases (8 percent and 5 percent, respectively).

See how other states fared on Election Day in Pornhub’s blog post.