Elections are not just a matter of casting ballots. They depend on citizens being able to register to vote and accessing information about candidates and the election process, which in turn depend on the strength and security of the Internet. Despite the risks posed by potential cyberattacks aimed to disrupt democracy, Cloudflare did not observe any significant disruptions to campaigns or local government websites from cyberattack.
Tuesday, November 5, 2024 was Election Day in the United States. It not only decided the next president and vice president but also included elections for the US Senate, House of Representatives, state governorships, and state legislatures. Results confirm that Republican Donald Trump won the presidential election.
In this blog post, we examine online attacks against election-related sites — some of which were notable but none were disruptive — and how initial election results impacted Internet traffic across the US at both national and state levels, with increases in traffic as much as 15% nationwide. We’ll also explore email phishing trends and general DNS data around news interest, the candidates, and election-related activity.
We’ve been tracking 2024 elections globally through our blog and election report on Cloudflare Radar, covering some of the more than 60 national elections around the globe this year. At Cloudflare, we support many of these efforts to ensure a secure and trustworthy election process. We worked closely with election officials, government agencies, and civil society groups across the country to ensure that groups working in the election space had the tools they needed to stay online.
Regarding the US elections, we have previously reported on trends surrounding the first Biden vs. Trump debate, the attempted assassination of Trump and the Republican National Convention, the Democratic National Convention, and the Harris-Trump presidential debate.
Key takeaways:
In the 24 hour period from October 31 - November 1, Cloudflare automatically mitigated over 6 billion HTTP DDoS requests that targeted US election-related websites–such as state and local government election sites and political campaigns. There were no significant disruptions to the targeted websites during this time period.
The day before the election, DNS traffic to Trump/Republican and Harris/Democrat websites peaked, with daily DNS traffic rising 59% and 4% respectively.
On election day, states in the midwest saw the highest traffic growth across the US, as compared to the previous week.
Internet traffic in the US peaked after the first polling stations closed, with a 15% increase over the previous week.
DNS traffic to news, polling, and election websites also saw large traffic jumps. Polling services were up 756% near poll closures and news sites were up 325% by late evening.
How Cloudflare assists with election infrastructure
Cloudflare’s goal is to ensure that sites that enable democracy — such as voter registration sites, election information portals, campaign websites, and results reporting platforms — remain secure and accessible, especially under heavy traffic periods or cyberattacks. Through our Impact programs, we provide essential cybersecurity resources to more than 800 websites that work on election infrastructure.
Project Galileo: Launched in 2014, Project Galileo provides free Business level services to media organizations, human rights defenders and non-profit organizations around the world. We protect more than 65 Internet properties related to elections in the United States that work on a range of topics related to voting rights, promoting free and fair elections, and posting election results. These organizations include Vote America, Decision Desk HQ, US Vote Foundation, and Electionland.
Athenian Project: Launched in 2017, the Athenian Project provides state and local governments that run elections with free Enterprise level services to ensure that voters can access accurate and up-to-date information about voter registration, polling places, and election results without interruption. We currently protect 423 websites in 33 states under the project.
Cloudflare for Campaigns: Launched in 2020, in partnership with Defending Digital Campaigns, Cloudflare for Campaigns provides a package of products to address the increasing risks posed by cyberattacks on political campaigns and state parties. We currently protect more than 354 campaigns and 34 state-level political parties in the United States.
Since 2020, we’ve strengthened our partnerships with election officials, government agencies, and nonprofits to provide essential protections. Throughout 2024, we’ve collaborated with CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) and the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative, briefing over 300 election officials on emerging threats and conducting 50+ calls with state and local governments to review security practices. Additionally, we held webinars on cyber threats to election groups and strategies for protecting election infrastructure.
With Defending Digital Campaigns, we worked to onboard more than 90 campaigns and parties weeks before election day. As part of this, we also worked with political vendors managing campaign infrastructure to provide insight on emerging threats and how to mitigate. Under Project Galileo, we onboarded more than 60 local media and journalism sites reporting on elections to ensure they can provide timely, accurate information on voting processes, candidate platforms, and election results.
Political and election-related cyber attacks
As we've seen several times this year, specific DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks often target political party or candidate websites around election day. While online attacks are frequent and not always election-related, we saw recent DDoS incidents in France, the Netherlands, and the U.K. focused on political parties during election periods.
In the US, we saw a similar uptick in attacks immediately prior to the election. Cloudflare blocked cyberattacks targeting websites affiliated with both parties, attempting to take the sites offline. Although some attacks had high volumes of traffic, the targeted websites remained online.
DDoS attacks targeting US political or elections-related Internet properties in particular clearly picked up starting in September, with the more than 6 billion HTTP DDoS requests seen during the first six days of November exceeding the volume seen during all of September and October.
Some campaign websites drove most of the malicious HTTP request traffic as part of DDoS attacks, with a clear increase since October 1, compared to minimal DDoS activity earlier in 2024.
Let’s look at a few examples of specific DDoS attacks, as these are easier to track.
High-profile campaign website, October 29 - November 6
Cloudflare blocked a series of DDoS attacks targeting a high-profile campaign website. The attacks began on October 29, with a four-minute spike reaching 345,000 requests per second. On October 31, more intense attacks followed, with the first lasting over an hour, peaking at 213,000 requests per second. Hours later, on November 1, a larger attack reached 700,000 requests per second, followed by two more waves at 311,000 and 205,000 requests per second.
Over 16 hours, Cloudflare blocked more than 6 billion malicious HTTP requests between October 31 and November 1. Additional attacks continued on November 3, with peaks at 200,000 requests per second (rps); on November 4, at 352,000; on Election Day, November 5, at 271,000 around 14:33 ET (11:33 PT); and on November 6, at 108,000.
Our data shows that the attacker(s) randomized user agents, attempted cache-busting techniques (methods to bypass cached content and overload servers with unique requests), and employed a geodiverse approach.
The DDoS attack on November 1 reached peak bandwidth of over 16 Gbps sent to Cloudflare and maintained over 8 Gbps throughout the main attack, which lasted more than two hours.
US campaign infrastructure website, November 3
Attackers also expanded their attacks beyond campaign sites, to political parties and their infrastructure, attempting — unsuccessfully — to disrupt services. For example, on November 3, 2024, a DDoS attack targeted infrastructure associated with a major campaign, lasting two minutes and reaching 260,000 malicious HTTP requests per second.
US state political party, October 29
On October 29, 2024, a high-volume DDoS attack targeted a U.S. political party website from a specific state. The attack lasted over four hours, from 12:00 to 17:29 ET (09:00 to 14:29 PT), and peaked at 206,000 requests per second. In total, over 2 billion malicious HTTP requests were blocked that day as part of this DDoS attack.
The same method used in the November 1 attack on one of the main campaign websites, mentioned above, was also used in this case. Here, the DDoS attack reached a peak of 5.7 Gbps sent to Cloudflare by the attacker, and sustained over 3 Gbps for most of its four-and-a-half-hour duration.
US counties as a target, September 13
Since September, US state and local websites protected by Cloudflare under the Athenian Project have experienced increased DDoS attacks, particularly targeting specific counties. These types of sites have seen over 290 million malicious HTTP requests since September 1, with 4% of all requests blocked as threats. These attacks were less frequent and intense than those on US political campaigns infrastructure.
On September 13, 2024, a DDoS attack targeted a county website from 19:29 UTC to 22:32 UTC (15:29 to 18:32 ET), lasting three hours and peaking at 46,000 of malicious HTTP requests per second.
These rates of DDoS attacks are already significant, even more so when we compare it with the 2020 US presidential election. In 2020, we saw more varied blocked cyberattack HTTP requests, split between WAF (Web Application Firewall) and firewall rules, and DDoS attacks. There were also significantly fewer blocked requests related to DDoS and WAF, with nearly 100 million in the whole month of October 2020 and close to 25 million in November 2020, the month of the election. In contrast, during November 1-6, 2024, alone, we observed over 6 billion malicious HTTP requests in DDoS attacks targeting campaigns.
It’s also important to note that even smaller attacks can be devastating for websites not well-protected against such high levels of traffic. DDoS attacks not only overwhelm systems but also serve, if successful, as a distraction for IT teams while attackers attempt other types of breaches.
Internet traffic in the US grows after polls closed
Generally, election days do not lead to drastic changes in Internet traffic. Traffic usually slightly dips during voting hours, though not as sharply as on national holidays, and rises in the evening as results are announced.
In the US, a similar pattern was observed on November 5, 2024, with increased Internet traffic at night. However, traffic throughout the day was generally 6% higher than the previous week, starting as early as 09:15 ET (06:15 PT). This may also be because, unlike in other countries, Election Day in the US is on a weekday rather than a weekend and is not a national holiday. Internet traffic peaked after the first polls closed, around 21:15 ET (18:15 PT), as TV news stations displayed countdown clocks. At that moment, traffic was 15% higher than the previous week.
Note: The previous 7 days line that appears in the next chart is one hour behind due to the Daylight Saving Time change over the weekend in the US. All growth calculations in this post take that change into account.
The biggest spike in traffic growth (compared to the previous week) of Election Day occurred at around 01:30 am ET (22:30 PT), when projections began to favor Trump for the presidential victory and Fox News called Pennsylvania in his favor, with traffic rising 32% compared to the previous week. Later, during Donald Trump's speech between 02:30 and 02:45 am ET (23:30 and 23:45 PT), Internet traffic was 31% higher than the previous week.
On Election Day, daily Internet traffic in the US reached its highest level of 2024 in terms of requests, showing a 6% increase compared to the previous week.
As expected for a typical election day, considering what we observed in other countries, the share of traffic from mobile devices was also slightly higher on Election Day at 43%, compared to 42% the previous week.
State-level traffic growth peaks at 21:00 ET (18:00 PT)
State-level traffic shifts on Election Day, compared to the previous week, reveal more detail than country-level data. The map below highlights the biggest traffic changes, peaking at 21:00 ET (18:00 PT) after polling stations began to close. Notably, traffic increased nationwide and at the state level on Election Day, unlike during the two-hour presidential debates, which were broadcast on nationwide TV.
The most significant traffic increases were observed in Maine (44%), South Dakota (44%), and Montana (44%). Interestingly, central states saw higher percentages of Internet traffic growth than coastal ones. More populous states, such as California (8%), Texas (19%), New York (22%), and Florida (23%), also experienced notable traffic increases.
The seven swing states that are considered to have been decisive in the election — Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (we’re not considering Arizona due to data issues) — each saw traffic growth between 17% and 36%. Here’s a more focused view of those swing states for easier consumption:
State | Growth in traffic | Local time (in each state) |
Georgia | 25% | 21:15 |
Michigan | 34% | 21:15 |
Nevada | 17% | 18:15 |
North Carolina | 14% | 21:15 |
Pennsylvania | 33% | 21:15 |
Wisconsin | 36% | 20:15 |
DNS trends: from news outlets to polling services
Switching our focus to domain trends, our 1.1.1.1 resolver DNS data reveals a clear impact during the US elections when analyzing specific categories.
Analysis of DNS traffic for US news media outlets shows that traffic from the United States rose significantly right after 09:00 ET (06:00 PT), increasing around 15%, compared to the previous week. Traffic continued to climb throughout the day, peaking between 22:00 and 23:00 ET (19:00 and 20:00 PT) with DNS request traffic volume 325% higher than the previous week. There was also a brief spike on Wednesday, November 6, at 05:00 ET (02:00 PT), showing a 117% increase.
We observed significantly higher DNS traffic for polling services websites — websites of platforms or organizations that conduct and publish polls — on Election Day, peaking at 13:00 ET (10:00 PT) with a 206% increase from the previous week, and again at 22:00 ET (19:00 PT), after the polls started to close, with a 756% increase. Daily traffic to this category was up 145% on Election Day, and 36% the day prior.
Election and voting information-related websites also saw a notable rise in DNS traffic around Election Day. Traffic clearly began to increase the day before the election, and peaked on November 5, 2024, at 12:00 ET (09:00 PT), with a 313% increase from the previous week. Daily traffic was 139% higher on Election Day, and 68% higher the day before.
Social media sites/applications, especially microblogging platforms like X and Threads, were also impacted during Election Day. DNS traffic for these microblogging platforms peaked at 22:00 ET (19:00 PT), aligning with spikes for news organizations and polling services, showing a 91% increase compared to the previous week. In this microblogging category, daily DNS traffic on Election Day rose by 12% from the previous week.
Regarding the two main presidential candidates, DNS traffic for their websites and their parties’ websites was much higher the day before the election than on Election Day. On November 4, 2024, daily DNS traffic to Trump and Republican websites was up 59% compared to the previous week, while traffic to Harris and Democrat websites, which had a more significant increase in DNS traffic the previous week, rose by 4%.
Candidate-related email phishing trends
From a cybersecurity perspective, trending events, topics, and individuals often attract more emails, including malicious, phishing, and spam messages. Our earlier analysis covered email trends involving “Joe Biden” and “Donald Trump” since January. We’ve since updated it to include Kamala Harris after the Democratic Convention and the Harris-Trump debate.
From June 1 through November 4, 2024, Cloudflare’s Cloud Email Security service processed over 19 million emails with “Donald Trump” or “Kamala Harris” in the subject line — 13.9 million for Trump and 5.3 million for Harris. Nearly half of these emails (49%) were sent since September. In the last 10 days of the campaign (since October 24), Harris was named in 800,000 email subject lines and Trump in 1.3 million.
Since June 1, 12% of emails mentioning Trump were marked as spam, and 1.3% were flagged as malicious or phishing. This rate has dropped since September 1, with only 3% marked as spam and 0.3% as malicious. For emails mentioning Harris, the rates were lower: 0.6% were marked as spam and 0.2% as malicious since June, increasing slightly to 1.2% spam and 0.2% malicious since September 1. Trump was mentioned more frequently in email subjects than Harris and was found in higher overall percentages of spam and malicious emails.
Conclusion: keeping track of elections
Although Cloudflare observed a notable increase in DDoS attacks on political and election-related sites, blocking billions of malicious requests, these attacks resulted in no significant disruption due to planning and proactive defenses. We share the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s view that “our election infrastructure has never been more secure” and concur with their conclusion that “We have no evidence of any malicious activity that had a material impact on the security or integrity of our election infrastructure." Keeping our elections secure and resilient is critical to the functioning of democracy, and Cloudflare is proud to have played our part.
If you want to follow more trends and insights about the Internet and elections in particular, you can check Cloudflare Radar, and more specifically our new 2024 Elections Insights report, which will be updated as elections take place throughout the year.