How the first 2024 US presidential debate influenced Internet traffic and security trends

Cloudflare Radar’s analysis of the June 27, 2024 Biden–Trump debate finds modest nationwide but notable state-level Internet traffic dips (up to -17%), increased activity on microblogging/video platforms, and substantially larger DNS surges to Trump-related and donation sites (peaks ~803% and ~1270% vs prior week) than Biden’s; Cloudflare Email Security also saw higher spam/malicious rates for subjects containing "Trump" (3%/0.6%) than "Biden" (0.8%/0.2%). No cyberattack spike occurred during the debate, though government/political sites experienced frequent DDoS in prior months (e.g., 35k rps on June 24), and by comparison France and UK debates drove larger nationwide traffic drops (-14% and -7%).