In a long article over at Policy by Blog entitled
"Are Blogs the New Iowa?", David Perlmutter posts what to me is an astonishing bit of research (emphasis mine):
The Nielsen//NetRatings service reported that in the single month of July 2005, Kos attracted 4.8 million separate visitors. The Kos audience is thus greater than the combined populations of Iowa, where the first presidential caucus takes place, and New Hampshire, site of the first primary, according to the current Democratic party schedule.
Through
Site Meter, I had long known what the average daily audience of Dailykos is. On slow days, it comes in at around 400,000. On heavy days it comes in at well over one million. However, I had very little idea what the total audience of Dailykos was, because I had o reliable information on the breakdown between the casual audience and the regular audience. Now, I know that like any measurement of website traffic, Nielson is hardly perfect, but it does provide some real insight. 4.8 million is a stunning number, considering that in July of 2005 Site Meter recorded about 15.7 million unique visits for Dailykos (
see report here, PDF, page 7).
Using Site Meter and Blogads, I have for some time measured the daily audience of the progressive political blogosphere at around three to four million. However, to be on the safe side, I had assumed that everyone who reads political blogs read them every day. Further, I was measuring only those blogs that could be considered "independent," and that are not tied to an established media publication such as MSNBC, a progressive organization such as the Center for American Progress, or large financial backing, such as the Huffington Post. I further was not counting traffic for large message boards such as Democratic underground that have blogs, but are not mainly blogs. Clearly, considering all of my underestimations, I have been holding down public estimates hwo the size of the audience of the progressive political blogosphere. Now it seems to me that the Neilson figures on Dailykos
support numbers from Hotline back in April, even though I doubted those numbers at the time:
20. How often do you read "blogs" that deal with political issues?
Every Day: 8%
A few times a week: 9%
A few times a month: 6%
Less often than that: 10%
Never: 65%
Don't Know / Refused: 3%
This poll was entirely of registered voters who self-identify as Democrats. With around sixty to seventy million Americans fitting that profile, the Hotline figures implied a daily audience for the progressive political blogosphere of about five to six million, a weekly audience of around ten to twelve million, and a monthly audience of fifteen million.
That fifteen million number may sound absurdly high, but with 4.8 million separate visitors coming to Dailykos in one month, it may not be. One thing for sure is that my estimates of three to four million were in fact low. The daily audience of the progressive political blogosphere is at least four million, and the monthly audience probably does surpass ten million.
For the progressive political blogosphere to have reached this size in just five or six years of existence is remarkable. When one considers the demographics of the progressive political blogosphere and the sheer size of its audience, it is not an exaggeration to write that the progressive political blogosphere now reaches the significant majority of the well-heeled activist class within the Democratic Party and the progressive movement. The political and media ramifications of this development are astounding. I won't pontificate on those ramifications at this time, but I will direct people back to the BlogPac netroots survey (
part one and
part two). Remarkable indeed.
Update: In the comments, someone has produced
the actual research, which it appears Perlmutter misquoted by moving the decimal place over one. That again appears to leave the numbers from the Hotline poll as the anomoly. The mystery over how many people read progressive political blogs raamins as difficult to calculate as ever.
