I’ll be honest: I’m not really all that into blogging about this Bloggasm article on relative losses in political blogs’ readership since October 2008, for a few reasons. First off, I’m not particularly convinced that the sample is relevant: if you look at the list, yes, most of the major ones are on there – but are they really representative? It’s been years since my last statistics class, but I can tell that there’s one heck of a selection bias going on in there. Second: there is no universe where Andrew Sullivan is ‘right of center,’ sorry. For that matter, Ann Althouse barely qualifies.
Third – and this is why I’m putting this up; some people that I privately showed the chart below the fold to insisted that I should – I think that it’s probably more significant to look at yearly trends anyway.
| Blog | Jun-08 | Oct-08 | May-09 | Oct-May | Jun-May |
| Daily Kos | 32.19 | 82.89 | 25.29 | -69% | -21% |
| C&L | 6.85 | 11.25 | 5.72 | -49% | -16% |
| FDL | 2.24 | 4.52 | 2.52 | -44% | 13% |
| Eschaton | 2.66 | 4.21 | 2.07 | -51% | -22% |
| America | 1.98 | 4.95 | 1.61 | -67% | -19% |
| WM | 1.02 | 3.19 | 1.71 | -46% | 68% |
| MyDD | 3.32 | 2.61 | 0.52 | -80% | -84% |
| TalkLeft | 2.11 | 1.4 | 0.68 | -51% | -68% |
| OpenLeft | 0.82 | 1.56 | 0.49 | -69% | -40% |
| Andrew Sullivan | 6.54 | 23.2 | 8.4 | -64% | 28% |
| Drudge Retort | 1.79 | 2.82 | 1.8 | -36% | 1% |
| 61.52 | 142.6 | 50.81 | -64% | -17% | |
| Hot Air | 9.84 | 23.71 | 19.59 | -17% | 99% |
| Instapundit | 6.99 | 10.7 | 11 | 3% | 57% |
| Michelle Malkin | 7.08 | 14.75 | 7.45 | -49% | 5% |
| AoSHQ | 1.43 | 4.1 | 2.59 | -37% | 81% |
| RS | 1.68 | 3.72 | 2.16 | -42% | 29% |
| Gateway | 0.62 | 2.13 | 1.12 | -47% | 81% |
| Althouse | 0.68 | 1.28 | 0.95 | -26% | 40% |
| Hugh Hewitt | 1.03 | 2.68 | 0.67 | -75% | -35% |
| Patterico | 0.5 | 0.81 | 0.46 | -43% | -8% |
| 29.85 | 63.88 | 45.99 | -28% | 54% |
Once you look at last year’s numbers, the trends become a lot more clear, for these specific sites. Personal preferences aside, electing a Democrat has turned out to be a traffic boost for the Right-oriented sites featured and a traffic depressor for the Left-oriented sites featured. I’d love to see the two-year numbers, so as to get rid of the distortion that even the beginning of the Presidential primary season was generating – but it looks like generally the Right-blogs featured here kept some of the traffic boost from the election, and generally the Left-blogs featured here did not. They, in fact, have been declining.
How relevant is this? Honestly, not very much – unless you’re an advertiser who’s trying to decide where your next ad buy is going to be, I suppose. And then only then if the site in question has set ad rates that assume future growth, and not shrinkage…
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
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.