Leading the political blogs
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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Obama’s text message on the veep
Image via Wikipedia Following up on the panel at AEJMC about the Internet in the 2008 political season, Garrett M. Graff explains the way Barack Obama’s text message alert about his vice presidential selection is actually a means to a larger end.
But announcing Mr. Obama’s running mate by text message has little to do with proclaiming the selection and everything to do with getting out the vote on Election Day in November. The move should add thousands — and more likely tens or hundreds of thousands — of cellphone numbers to what is already one of the most detailed political databases ever created.
A study conducted during the 2006 elections showed that text-message reminders helped increase turnout among new voters by four percentage points, at a cost of only $1.56 per vote — much cheaper than the $20 or $30 per vote that the offline work of door-to-door canvassing or phone banking costs.
It’s a shrewd way to get new contacts into a campaign database, and I suspect it’s something that more candidates will be doing in future elections. It will be interesting to see whether such TXT GOTV methods actually increase turnout by 4 percent or more. That’s a huge number in a presidential campaign, and if it’s effective, might be Obama’s tipping point.
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Dog whistles and politics
Image by comicbase via FlickrThis summer, I taught a class at Eastern Illinois called “Freedom of Expression,” a senior seminar that dealt with the first amendment and its evolution in American judicial and political history.
Throughout the course, we had the opportunity to delve into some of the aspects of the current campaign for the U.S. presidency. One of those aspects that I found fascinating was the rise of a word in the political lexicon: dog whistle, as in “dog whistle politics.”
The use of “dog whistle” isn’t new to this campaign, but the term is relatively new, appearing (from my limited research for class) only in the late 1990s in relation to politics, and originating in the Australian political campaigns of prime minister John Howard.
Today, Melissa McEwan in the Guardian (U.K.) explains what a dog whistle is, how it works, and why it’s such a pernicious piece of political strategy. To wit:
The dog whistle piques them with something the average person won’t see as bigoted, but that the constituency for which they advocate (and/or of which they’re a part) will expect them to call out, because they instantly spy it and recognize it for what it is; they’ve heard the tune of that particular string being plucked their whole lives. Then whoever calls it out is marginalized as a hysteric, over-reactionary, looking to get offended, etc.
It’s a pretty good primer and one I’ll bookmark for any future discussions of the topic.
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