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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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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This 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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