Is the UK political blogosphere left or right-wing?

Have been meaning to put together a post on this topic for a while now but never managed to get around to it.

The Daily Telegraph's Home and Legal Affairs Correspondent posted last week about comments made by Alastair Campbell complaining that the UK political blogosphere is too right wing. Hope posed the question to his readers as to whether this was true or not.

Well, according to the opinion of fellow Telegraph writer, Robert Colvile, the right is very much leading the way online.

Then there is the argument that it is always much easier to blog in opposition - just look at the US's vociferous, campaigning bloggers on the political left.

But do we actually know how the left/right blogs split in terms of volume? Guido and Iain Dale, it could be argued, make the most noise but who has the biggest network?

The most recent, comprehensive stats I've got come from a study by James Stanyer from Loughborough University who surveyed the UK blogosphere during the 2005 general election.

Stanyer's figures are now out of date, but they give an interesting snapshot of the political web at that moment in time:

• 312 blogs covering political issues and the general election - this figure will undoubtedly be much higher now. Just take a look at Iain Dale's top 500 political blogs published last week.
• 47% (n147) of these blogs were left-wing including centre-left and hard-left
• 8% (n26) were right-wing including centre or hard-right
• 45% had no discernable ideological stance

So from these findings the idea that right-wing bloggers hold sway appears to be a myth or at least was in 2005. Has it all changed? Or are the right-wing blogs making all the noise. More work needs to be done. It's not me (at tis stage, anyway)... any offers?

Technorati tags: Christopher Hope, political blogging, left-wing, right-wing, research, James Stanyer

Comments

[Guido Fawkes]

That is not traffic-weighted.

Put simply a lot of left-wing blogs are unread, a few right-wing blogs are very high-traffic.

No left-wing blog comes close in traffic terms.

[Adam]

The political consensus in the UK (at least that part of it in power) is weighted towards the Left at the moment.

Thus, it makes sense that the marginalised Right would make more use of alternative communications channels.

[Jonny Rosemont]

Hi Simon, hope things are grand.

Iain Dale's book was published last week and it shows that out of the top 500 blogs, 154 are on the right and 153 are on the left. This has been voted by the readers of Iain's blog, who you would expect to be mainly Tories but this isn't actually the case. The ones towards the top of the list are tory blogs however.

My opinion, the political blogosphere is ultimately balanced, but the tories are better at promoting their own. This will change under a Conservative government ;)

[David Brain]

Simon,

When we surveyed this a while ago (before you joined us) we came to a similar conclusion. I think a pretty common view about why there are more right wing blogs in the UK and left wing in the US is that it is easier to blog from opposition. Not sure if you have views on that one. Bleow are the links to the polls we ran and published.

http://www.sixtysecondview.com/?p=37

http://www.sixtysecondview.com/?p=38

[Stuart Bruce - Wolfstar]

I think it is largely about why people blog. A lot of Labour bloggers I've spoken to are doing it to connect with a discrete audience, where as the high traffic right-wing blogs serve a different purpose. Traffic doesn't matter if the blogs is connecting with the people it is meant to, in fact getting readers and comments from people outside your target group can be a problem as it puts off/scares your real audience.

[Simon]

Very interesting comment thread with a good bit of contradiction - or at least different emphasis. I'll try to follow up some the points raised in another post.

[Ellee]

Stuart, I shall look forward to it.