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Just curiosity, due to the heavy political particularities of this 2020 presidential election, did the site happen to see a huge growth of questions / traffic since November 3, 2020 (and even a few weeks / months before)?

Are there some graphs available somewhere?

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Users with 5,000 reputation or more can share graphs from the site analytics but for the number of questions, we also have the Stack Exchange Data Explorer.

enter image description here

This graph (source) shows the number of questions per day (averaged over a week). Yes, the number of questions spiked during the elections, but since then the situation returned to normal 2020 levels.

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    Is it possible to include November 2016, the previous Presidental Election, as well? I recall there were lots of topics of the type "Can we prevent the election winner from taking office?" questions back then.
    – Sjoerd
    Jan 11, 2021 at 23:28
  • @Sjoerd, yes - that's the advantage of SEDE query parameters. It does make the graph more messy.
    – Glorfindel
    Jan 12, 2021 at 15:14
  • Thanks. I see that the peak in November 2016 was as high as the recent peak. After that peak, it reverted to a level that stayed about level for the four years inbetween the elections. Several peaks, but always reverting the to the same base level (although it's certainly higher than pre-2016 elections)
    – Sjoerd
    Jan 12, 2021 at 19:13
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For what's worth it, since I have access, the analytics page gives this graph for traffic:

enter image description here

There was a spike surrounding the election day and there seems to one now as well, but otherwise the traffic was not out of the ordinary in this time frame.

On the sources sub-page, which only works for one month prior (and it's just a pie chart), about 2/3 of the traffic comes from direct search engine searches, most of these from google. About 20% are "referral" links from other stack-exchange domains, and 10% are "direct" (which I'm not sure what it means).

The number of q's does show a recent spike on the analytics page (unlike in Glorfindel's graph) which actually reflects my subjective impression too. Perhaps the analytics page is updated more often.

enter image description here

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  • Since this is a restricted privilege, we'd prefer you not share the raw data.
    – TheSimpliFire
    Jan 9, 2021 at 15:29
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    @TheSimpliFire: I did not post the raw data, which is a CSV. I posted a graph. And the next sentence in your link is "However, we do hope you will share your analysis of the data with other users on meta." Would you have preferred I simply wrote above post and not shown/poven you the 2nd spike exists, just "take my word for it"?
    – Fizz
    Jan 9, 2021 at 18:18
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    My graph ran up to January 2nd (SEDE is updated once a week, on Sunday very early in the morning). I've updated it now and the current spike is also showing.
    – Glorfindel
    Jan 10, 2021 at 10:10

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