Iraq has consistently ranked as the most-discussed issue in political blogs throughout the campaigns, and blog-related discussion has both spiked with key political events and preceded certain issues, waiting for mainstream media attention to catch up.
“Clearly, bloggers' influence on political discussion and the election is evident and growing”
With less than one week until the Nov. 2 election, these findings emerge in data from Intelliseek's Campaign Radar 2004, a web site that tracks and analyzes political blog content daily from more than two million blogs.
"Clearly, bloggers' influence on political discussion and the election is evident and growing," said Intelliseek CMO Pete Blackshaw. "The web-enabled public is relying on a variety of sources, including blogs, traditional media and other web sites, to inform themselves, find unfiltered opinions, and to guide their votes. And bloggers, in some instances, are pushing the envelope in defining the political agenda and news coverage."
Among Intelliseek's findings from political blog data since August:
-- Top Blogs: Matt Drudge's Drudge Report has been cited nearly 7,800 times in blogs, followed by DailyKos (7,700), Instapundit (6,900), Powerline (5,500), Atrios (5,500), and Talking Points Memo (5,500). Presidentially speaking, Sen. John Kerry's blog (1,616 links) ranked 22nd among the top 100 political blogs: President George Bush's blog (581 links) ranked 50th.
-- Top Media Sources: With nearly 45,000 citations, the web site of the New York Times leads all media sources, followed by the Washington Post (33,000), Yahoo! News (27,000), CNN (24,500), MSNBC (17,000), the National Review (12,400) and the BBC (10,500).
-- Top Websites: The top three non-news, non-blog links included in blog postings are those to Sen. John Kerry's campaign web site (more than 10,000 citations), the White House web site (6,500 citations) and President Bush's campaign web site (5,500).
-- Top Campaign Issues: Iraq has consistently ranked as the top issue, capturing a range of 11%-30% of citations in political blog postings, followed by the economy (7%-13%), health care (2.5%-9.5%), environment (1%-3%) and education (1%-4%).
Campaign Radar's blog chatter closely tracks real-word events, with predictable discussion spikes occurring during the August and September political conventions, the September-October presidential debates, news events in Iraq and emerging flu-shot concerns.
In some cases, bloggers' attention to certain issues kept them alive before or until mainstream media coverage caught up. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign emerged in blogs in late July and peaked in mainstream media coverage in August, while the bloggers' discrediting of Dan Rather's news source for his CBS "60 Minutes" coverage of Bush's National Guard service continued throughout the week after the segment aired in early September; Rather apologized later that month.
Find Intelliseek's Campaign Radar at http://politics.blogpulse.com and its BlogPulse portal at http://www.blogpulse.com. Blog data highlighted in this release is at: http://www.blogpulse.com/politics/politics_summary.html.
About Intelliseek (http://www.intelliseek.com)
Intelliseek provides technology solutions that help marketers derive intelligence from numerous data sources, including internal CRM systems and the growing amount of consumer-generated media (CGM) found in online discussion forums, message boards, review sites and blogs. Intelliseek maintains headquarters in Cincinnati with offices in New York, California and Washington D.C., and an Applied Research Center in Pittsburgh.
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