May ’09 political blog readership 53% lower than it was in October ’08
It’s a well known trend that web traffic on political sites falls immediately after election season, but how much has it fallen this time around, and have any blogs or political ideologies weathered the off-season better than others?
To find this out, I surveyed the traffic stats of 20 major political blogs  split evenly between left and right of center and compared the number of page views from October 2008 to May 2009. For consistency, only blogs that openly displayed their traffic statistics through Sitemeter were surveyed. The number of page views does not represent the number of unique visitors to a site, but rather the number of times a page was loaded.
I found that page views for all political blogs fell 109,719,615, or 53%. Right of center blogs weathered the post-election season a little better, falling only 37%, while blogs that were left-of-center fell by 64%.
Some blogs did better than others. Instapundit, for instance, was the only blog to show a slight increase in page views between the two months. Hot Air and Ann Althouse also saw a much less significant drop compared to all other blogs. Out of all the blogs surveyed, MyDD saw the most significant drop, with a decrease of 80% in pageviews.
Specific traffic numbers come after the jump.
LEFT-OF-CENTER BLOGS
http://dailykos.com/
Oct: 82,893,374
May: 25,293,380
Change: A decrease of 57,599,994, or 69%
http://crooksandliars.com/
Oct: 11,253,292
May: 5,715,487
Change: A decrease of 5,537,805, or 49%
http://firedoglake.com/
Oct: 4,525,586
May: 2.524,561
Change: A change of 2,001,025, or 44%
http://www.eschatonblog.com/
Oct. 4,209,317
May: 2,065,859
Change: A decrease of 2,143,458, or 51%
http://americablog.blogspot.com/
Oct: 4,948,804
May: 1,613,535
Change: A decrease of 3,335,269, or 67%
http://washingtonmonthly.com/
Oct: 3,193,781
May: 1,705,896
Change: A decrease of 1,487,885, or 47%
http://www.drudge.com/
Oct: 2,820,058
May: 1,804,330
Change: A decrease of 1,015,728, or 36%
http://www.mydd.com/
Oct: 2,612,017
May: 527,408
Change: A decrease of 2,084,609, or 80%
http://www.talkleft.com/
Oct: 1,396,046
May: 675,909
Change: A decrease of 720,137, or 51%
http://openleft.com/
Oct: 1,564,408
May: 490,396
Change: A decrease of 1,074,012, or 69%
Total Oct: 119,416,683
Total May: 42,416,755
Change: A decrease of 76,999,928, or 64%
RIGHT-OF-CENTER BLOGS:
http://hotair.com/
Oct: 23,713,333
May: 19,590,193
Change: A decrease of 4,123,140, or 17%
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/
Oct: 10,700,198
May: 10,999,251
Change: An increase of 299,053, or 3%
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/
Oct: 23,202,451
May: 8,396,220
Change: A decrease of 14,806,203, or 64%
http://michellemalkin.com/
Oct: 14,752,937
May: 7,446,713
Change: A decrease of 7,306,224, or 50%
http://www.ace.mu.nu/
Oct: 4,102,143
May: 2,585,612
Change: A decrease of 1,516,531, or 37%
http://www.redstate.com/
Oct: 3,718,607
May: 2,161,503
Change: A decrease of 1,557,104, or 42%
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/
Oct: 2,138,524
May: 1,120,150
Change: A decrease of 1,018,374, or 48%
http://althouse.blogspot.com/
Oct: 1,283,172
May: 952,534
Change: A decrease of 330,638, or 26%
http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog
Oct: 2,681,263
May: 672,132
Change: A decrease of 2,009,131, or 75%
http://patterico.com/
Oct: 806,918
May: 455,551
Change: A decrease of 351,367, or 43%
Total Oct: 87,099,546
Total May: 54,379,859
Change: A decrease of 32,719,687, or 37%
I have trouble imagining a universe in which Andrew Sullivan could be considered a righty blogger.
Furthermore, his drop — 64% — seems more in line with the drop of lefty bloggers than righty ones.
Indeed, the only other blogger on the right who lost over half their traffic was Hugh Hewitt/Townhall. And given that their business is collapsing and they have lost most of their bloggers, that seems a solid “exception that proves the rule” kind of thing.
I would re-jigger the numbers with Sullivan correctly allocated, which would just make the point even more acutely.
Gotta agree with Soren. Sullivan has definitely crossed to the left.
With the demise of print media, blogs are too big to fail. Where’s the bailout?
Andrew Sullivan on the right, you mine as well have Charles Johnson on the right as well.
Yeah, why is Sullivan listed on the right? The only friends I have who take him seriously are lefties.
In no reality is Andrew Sullivan right of center.
with all DUE repsect – and i mean that!
choosing october was DUMB: it was right before the election: of COURSE traffic was up then – for almost everyone!
moron.
why not use a 4 month rolling average!?
starting in june 2008 to june 2009.
(so 6/08′s number goes back to feb 08!)
then tell me something interesting.
jerk.
How is Drudge left-of-center? I don’t understand your rationale there.
Sullivan writes the Daily Douche?
Sullivan’s Trig-Trutherism puts him not just firmly on the left, but out in the fever swamps.
Also, Drudge should be on the right, if one considers him a blogger at all.
I’d say that you’d do better with the left/right distinction if you swapped Drudge for Sullivan. Interestingly, both also are close to the median in their “correct” group.
Like a lot of people, I’m one who used to read Sullivan. Definite lefty.
Where’s Powerline?
Drudge should be on the right.
Also, Kudos to Instapundit for showing an increase!
Sullivan is right-of-center? What are you smoking and can I have some?
Any post or analysis of anything whatsoever that considers the deranged Sullivan as right-of-center immediately eliminates itself from the rational world.
Also, drudge.com is listed under left-blogs, wouldn’t it by a nice comparison to list drudgereport.com under the right-blogs? I know, it’s not technically a blog, but I think it falls into the same category…
The Other McCain traffic increased from 123,837 in October to 326,988 in May. Thank you, Carrie Prejean nude!
Of course, Sullivan is a right-winger. The only people who would consider him on the left are the Hot Air/Little Green Footballs crowd.
He’s still an avowed racist (e.g., The Bell Curve) and misogynistic bigot (e.g., Campaign ’08, anti-choice zealotry, love of slurs). At best, he’s a libertarian. But, in reality, he’s a right-winger who has fooled some lefties because of his about-face on the Iraq invasion and now his stance against torture.
1. Of course, Sullivan should be on the Left.
2. Folks need to look at the drudge URL — it’s not the Drudge Report.
Davidson,
Andrew Sullivan endorsed Kerry in 2004 and Obama in 2008. He trashed the war he once supported, campaigns for gay marriage, pursues bizarre conspiracy theories about Palin, etc. etc. I’ll grant you his misogyny, but by that standard, Dave Letterman would be a right-winger.
BTW, ask him what the breakdown is for his readership. Lefties read him way more than Righties.
ABC News’ Top 100 Political Blogs…
I recieved an interesting email sent in by Bloggasm:
I remember reading your post the other day linking to ABC News’ list of the top 100 political blogs. I recently did a survey of the web traffic for 20 different major political blogs to try to …
All true, but what also might need to be factored in is how much of a jump the left blogs took building up to the election. I bet it was way more than right blogs did.
This is not a criticism of your post, just an observation
Drudge here is Drudge Retort, it’s left wing, not Matt Drudge.
There is a reason the Retort didn’t drop as much as the other left wing blogs, me.
I regularly run 600+ post threads, in politic, music, etc. for an ungrateful Rogers Cadenhead.
But that is coming to an end, watch what happens to the Drudge Retort numbers without me there.
Straight down.
Then he should’ve put the blog’s title above the URL, Bob. Just looking at the URL gives the clear impression that it’s actually The Drudge Report. The amount of research it took for Mr. Owens to come up with these mind-blowing observations of…something…took about as much effort as looking up scores on the sports page. It’s not as if he alone has the secret code to access Sitemeter’s stats. But even then, he still manages to put together a sloppy and amateurish piece of work.
METHINKS Owens didn’t know the difference.
Sloppy sourcing and sloppy categories.
Sloppy seconds all around. Feh.
I’m not surprised to see liberal blogs fall further than conservative ones after the election, because being in the opposition has in general been good for blogs. That’s one of the reasons liberal blogs have grown bigger and drawn more traffic than their conservative counterparts.
I noted on my blog that the Retort’s drop is closer to that of conservative blogs than the other liberals. That’s unexpected.
It would be a very interesting thing to analyze a larger swathe of blogs – 100-200 at a time – and take a more precise litmus test of their political affiliations.
By this analysis you have sites that aren’t quite blogs (e.g. -townhall – it’s a magazine with a cluttered assembly of blogs; drudge.com is as much of a blog as drudgereport.com), and the samples are certainly biased. I think a blog could actually thrive by analyzing the popularity of other blogs on the netispherewww (and thus rise to the top of its own charts!).
Several things seem to be at work here…
1. RECENT ELECTION CYCLE: Change from a Republican to a Democrat in the White House shifts the enthusiasm and activism from one group to another, impacting the activity of their respective blog communities.
2. THE EVOLUTION OF THE BLOG FORMAT: Blogs used to be the domain of political renegades. They became more mainstream and commercialized. For a short time, they experienced exponential growth. I believe we are on the downward side of the blog lifecycle curve.
3. RISE OF ALTERNATIVES: Alternative new media publishing tools makes the blog format one of many choices for both the reader and the publisher. Micro-blogging, SMS, Twitter, Facebook, etc. all compete for much of the same audience.
Over the next few years, I suspect political enthusiasts and news junkies will still crave the original content and instant analysis that the blog format is so well-suited. However, with so many alternatives, especially in the area of mobile media, I think we will continue to see an overall decline in blog traffic for all but the most robust blog communities.
drudge.com is as much of a blog as drudgereport.com
I get that a lot, but the front page is just one way to look at the Retort. Here’s another view of today’s posts that shows it’s very much a blog.
Interesting statistics…I wonder how the growth of blogging in general will help to reverse those downward trends as more and more people begin to read blogs more regularly.