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Who's Reading Political Blogs?

The Washington Post reports on Blogads' survey of political blogreaders. It's not the 20-something crowd.

In an unscientific Web survey of 36,000 people, Blogads reported that political blog readers tend to be age 41 to 50, male (72 percent), and earn $60,000 to $90,000 per year. Two in five have college degrees, while just a tad less have graduate degrees.

The full survey results can be found here. TalkLeft's results are here. What do the results mean?

"These are not people who are politically idealistic and born yesterday," said Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, who runs the popular liberal site DailyKos.

"I think people want to dismiss blog readers as unemployed people in their basement. Apparently not," said Glenn Reynolds of the conservative blog InstaPundit.

The responders said they spent an average of ten hours a week reading blogs, often for "news I can't find elsewhere."

"These are people who are presumably overworked and overstressed like the rest of us, only they find 10 hours a week to look at blogs. It's a mark of their alienation" from other forms of media, said Carol Darr, director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet.

Chris Bowers at MyDD has dissected the results.

As to TalkLeft's readers, 46% have a post-graduate degree. Another 35% have college degrees. That's 81%. As to party affiliation, 69% are Democrats and 18% are independents. A whopping 85% have written or called a politician at the state, local, or national level, while 77% have signed petitions. They read the major newspapers and The Nation, American Prospect, Mother Jones, Slate and The Onion. Income is high (48% earn between $60 and $150k while 13% earn between $150 and $300k). 50% have donated online to a political candidate or campaign. They also buy plane tickets and computers, music and books. 77% do not have their own blog.

They read blogs for faster news, news they can't get elsewhere and for a better perspective.

These are interesting results for advertisers. As Chris Bowers summarizes:

Active readers of Democratic political blogs are very highly educated, highly politically active, quite well-to-do, voracious consumers of media, not very young, and skew male. Apart from the male part, these indicators fly in the face of stereotypes about progressive bloggers, who are supposedly drooling, rabid, anti-social, uneducated, teenage extremists with no political value and out of touch with current events.

Quite to the contrary, active blog readers have a tremendous amount of political capital to spend, and are in search of adventurous progressive politicians and organizations to spend it on. Is there any major progressive political group in the country that would not want to appeal to the demographics of this readership? High concentrations of wealthy, highly educated, highly active media junkies cannot be found in many areas in either this or any other country. Mischaracterize and misjudge them at your own peril.

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  • Display: Sort:
    Re: Who's Reading Political Blogs? (none / 0) (#1)
    by squeaky on Mon May 01, 2006 at 11:14:58 AM EST
    Sounds like a force to be reckoned with.....we'll see what happens in November.

    Re: Who's Reading Political Blogs? (none / 0) (#2)
    by Che's Lounge on Mon May 01, 2006 at 11:30:31 AM EST
    What do the results mean? We're smarter than they think.

    Re: Who's Reading Political Blogs? (none / 0) (#3)
    by Che's Lounge on Mon May 01, 2006 at 11:32:06 AM EST
    BOO!

    Re: Who's Reading Political Blogs? (none / 0) (#4)
    by sarcastic unnamed one on Mon May 01, 2006 at 11:34:35 AM EST
    "These are people who are presumably overworked and overstressed like the rest of us, only they find 10 hours a week to look at blogs. It's a mark of their alienation" from other forms of media, said Carol Darr, director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet.
    Uh, or, they're wasting 10 hours/week of their employer's time at work...

    Re: Who's Reading Political Blogs? (none / 0) (#5)
    by roger on Mon May 01, 2006 at 11:49:52 AM EST
    So, who's the gov't official? Surely not W!

    Re: Who's Reading Political Blogs? (none / 0) (#6)
    by scribe on Mon May 01, 2006 at 02:03:58 PM EST
    It also means [blatant apple-shining follows]the three of you put together an outstanding product for us consumers of information to enjoy. You wouldn't be keeping well-educated people reading otherwise. [/blatant apple-shining] The interesting thing is, between TL and the other blogs, I get news as much as three days (rarely, but it's happened) ahead of the MSM's spittin' it out. Not that it does me much good, but it is nice to be ahead of the curve.

    Re: Who's Reading Political Blogs? (none / 0) (#7)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Mon May 01, 2006 at 02:52:33 PM EST
    Honestly, given that only 65 people responded to the TalkLeft survey, I'm not sure much _can_ be drawn from the results. It really says that 65 people cared enough to take the survey - given TalkLeft's traffic, that's a pretty tiny amount, and has a huge amount of self selection bias included in it.

    Re: Who's Reading Political Blogs? (none / 0) (#8)
    by rMatey on Mon May 01, 2006 at 05:45:29 PM EST
    It means that these people, just like me, are tired of being lied to by the media.

    Re: Who's Reading Political Blogs? (none / 0) (#9)
    by Patrick on Mon May 01, 2006 at 09:38:08 PM EST
    So, who's the gov't official? Surely not W!
    Roger, I'm hurt. I thought for sure you'd remember me.

    Re: Who's Reading Political Blogs? (none / 0) (#10)
    by roger on Tue May 02, 2006 at 01:16:20 PM EST
    Patrick, I was hoping for a congressperson or something!

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