How the Brazilian Presidential elections affected Internet traffic

Brazil's recent presidential election generated significant attention and impacted Internet traffic patterns in the country. On election days, internet traffic went down during the day as people went outside to vote. The runoff election on October 30 showed a bigger drop in traffic than the first round on October 2. Mobile device usage was also higher on weekends and election days. Election-related sites saw increased interest during both rounds of elections, with peaks at 16x and 17.4x more DNS queries compared to September baseline. Traffic for candidate websites showed a clear spike for Lula's domains when he was announced as the winner. News websites experienced higher traffic during the first round than the runoff, with peaks occurring earlier in the evening due to faster release of official results. Overall, real-world events like elections can have a significant impact on internet traffic patterns and human behavior online.