The article revealing that Ireland had voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment was read approximately one million times, making it the most-read online story in the history of The Irish Times.
Based on exit poll data, Political Editor Pat Leahy’s report was published at 10.01pm on Friday, just after polls closed. It projected that Ireland had voted by a two-to-one majority to liberalise the Republic’s abortion laws.
Weekend pageviews
Pageviews on Saturday, the day of the referendum count, were the second-highest on record for The Irish Times, exceeding the day of counting in the general election in February 2016 and only surpassed by the day Hurricane Ophelia struck Ireland on Monday, October 16th, 2017.
Almost half of traffic to irishtimes.com on Saturday was from outside Ireland, reflecting the international attention on the outcome of the referendum. Irish traffic accounted for 52 per cent of the overall, followed by the UK (14 per cent), the US (13 per cent), Australia (3 per cent ) and Canada (2 per cent), with the remainder from readers in other parts of the world.
