Leading the political blogs

October 23, 2008 · Filed Under Politics · Comment 

UPDATE: Jeff Bercovici at Portfolio.com asks some more questions:

Open-ended question that I can’t even begin to answer: Is an upsurge in liberal sentiment driving the traffic growth to liberal sites? Or do sites like Huffpo and Daily Kos deserve some of the credit (or blame, depending on your point of view) for the current pro-Democratic trend in politics?

Interesting numbers posted by paidContent about the top political weblogs this campaign season. Just for fun, I coded the sites along political leanings (red-conservative, blue-liberal/progressive, black-objective/centrist):

  Total Unique Visitors (000)
                                 Sep-2007        Sep-2008      % Change
Total Internet: Total Audience  181,858         189,468             4
HUFFINGTONPOST.COM                  792           4,545           474
POLITICO.COM                        532           2,362           344
DRUDGEREPORT.COM                  1,215           2,059            70
REALCLEARPOLITICS.COM               192           1,129           489
FREEREPUBLIC.COM                  1,022             987            -3
Capitol Advantage                   794             959            21
DAILYKOS.COM                        192             923           381
TOWNHALL.COM                        407             884           117
NEWSBUSTERS.ORG                     113             732           547
WORLDNETDAILY.COM                   411             636            55
TALKINGPOINTSMEMO.COM                32             458         1,321
MICHELLEMALKIN.COM                  103             247           140
REDSTATE.COM                         38             235           514
CROOKSANDLIARS.COM                  122             218            79
RAWSTORY.COM                        219             212            -3
POLLSTER.COM                        N/A             194           N/A
MEDIAMATTERS.ORG                    145             178            23
FIVETHIRTYEIGHT.COM                 N/A             169           N/A
CQPOLITICS.COM                      N/A             139           N/A
AMERICABLOG.COM                     N/A             104           N/A

The results:

Conservative: 8 (5,992)
Liberal/Progressive: 7 (6,595)
Objective/Centrist: 5 (4,783)

A pretty even breakdown between conservatives and liberal/progressives (although Huffingtonpost.com represents a majority of the liberal/conservative traffic. Obviously, all these blogs are benefiting from the intense scrutiny of this historic election.

Rafit Ali asks an important question:

And while these numbers are in and of itself interesting, the biggest question for any of them is what happens the day after?

I suspect many of these sites will do well in the coming year, although certainly not as well as they are doing during the campaign season. Remember that many of these sites (Daily Kos or RedState, for instance) have an agenda, and the agenda doesn’t stop with the election  - especially not this election season, with the economy, war, and health insurance promising to be at the forefront of the next president’s agenda.

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