Desmond has been aggressively price promoting the newspaper from 35p to 20p 1 this year will discount to 10p as the Northern & Shell-owned paper looks to drive up circulation to the 1m figure.
The Daily Star's circulation dipped from 827,005 to 823,025 copies between March and April - a less severe month-on-month downturn than its tabloid rivals which all fell back.
The Sun and The Daily Mirror's coverage of the run-up to the election and the leaders' debates did not help sales. The Daily Mirror fell 0.6% from 1,247,013 to 1,239,691 copies and The Sun dropped from 3,005,308 to 2,955,957 in the month, a fall of 1.6%.
The Daily Mirror, though, suffered a precipitous 6.1% fall on the year, shedding more copies per year than other London-based tabloids.
Across the mid-market the Daily Mail nudged up 0.7% in the month to 2,096,074 copies, but fell 3.9% on the year. Mid-market rival The Daily Express fell back 0.4% to 665,731 copies.
The London-based quality sector benefited from their coverage of the election and, with the exception of The Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times, all upped copy sales in April.
at the end of the month, upped its copy sales from 184,137 to 188,119 in April.
The Guardian was up 2.1% from 283,063 to 288,917 while The Times rose from 502,436 to 506,997. But all three quality titles suffered double-digit declines on the year, the worst of those being The Guardian's 15.8% drop, which inlcuded the effect of stripping out bulks.
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