Q&A Friday #82: How Does The Traffic Level At RWN Today Compare To The Previous Presidential Cycles?

11 Jan, 2008 by John Hawkins

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Question: “How does the level of traffic at your site compare to the 2000 or 2004 presidential election cycle? Accounting for normal site growth, does the traffic level lead you to say anything about the interest level of conservatives in general?” — fts

Answer: I wasn’t around for the 2000 election, but the site picked up a lot of steam during the 2004 election and then…stayed pretty much flat since.

You don’t hear people talk about it very often, but the political blogosphere as a whole, left and right, has, with a few exceptions, stayed about the same size since 2005.

The downside to that is obvious.

The upside is that the blogosphere hasn’t been shrinking, there is still an enormous untapped audience out there, and I expect to see traffic improve significantly at RWN and across the blogosphere this year because of the election.

PS #1: From what I have seen, conservative websites grew like weeds when Clinton was in office and the netroots benefitted enormously from having Bush in the White House. So, if the country is unfortunate enough to end up with a Democrat in office in 2008, I think you’ll see the netroots stay stagnant while the Rightroots doubles or triples in size.

PS #2: RWN has essentially been flat since 2005, but Conservative Grapevine tripled in size last year.

PS #3: Conservatives are generally dissatisfied and unhappy with the performance of the GOP which has effect. They’re also simultaneously complacent, because Bush has been in the White House for so long and the GOP has enough votes to stop the Democrats from doing their worst — at least for the moment. That probably has hurt traffic, but more importantly, it’s bad for the conservative movement in general.