A change of this sort has happened before. In the early days of political blogging, from 2000-2003, the conservative blogosphere was actually much larger than the progressive blogosphere. However, starting in late 2003, and continuing through late 2005, the audience for the progressive blogosphere surged. Over a two-year stretch, the progressive blogosphere turned a 3-1 audience deficit into a 2-1 audience advantage, even though the conservative blogosphere was actually gaining in overall audience during those two years.
It is now possible that the conservative blogosphere is close to parity with the progressive blogosphere in terms of overall audience. This is interesting, but also requires more study with more solid numbers to truly determine the state of play. Further, it is disturbing in that it might signal conservatives are starting to close the ground on progressives in terms of online infrastructure.
I have two preliminary explanations for this trend, which I explore in the extended entry.
Progressive blogs have a heavy electoral focus: The relatively higher progressive audience drop since the end of the 2008 election is surely connected to the heavy focus on electoral information within the progressive blogosphere. Websites like Daily Kos, fivethirtyeight, MyDD and even Open Left have taken elections as their central content focus for years. The right-wing blogopshere just has not focused on the electoral side of politics to the same degree. There simply is not the same amount of poll analysis, there have not been as many high-profile primary campaigns, and nowhere near the same amount of money has been raised by the two 'spheres. As such, the end of an election season is inevitably going to cause a steeper drop in traffic within the more electorally focused 'sphere.
Alternatives thrive when leadership is discredited: An equal, if not more important reason, for recent conservative relative gains has been the electoral success of the Democratic Party and the electoral failure of the Republican Party. Generally speaking, blogs function as alternatives to extent institutional power, and as such will thrive in environments when people are looking for alternative leadership for institutions which they value. In other words, now that the Democratic leadership is delivering victories, the general population of people interested in Democratic victories feels less compelled to seek alternative ideas, institutions, and leaders to achieve victory. Conversely, now that the Republican leadership has suffered so many brutal defeats, people interested in Republican and conservative victory are seeking out alternative strategies, institutions and leaders for Republican and conservative causes.
Within the world of progressive activists, from the viewpoint of the working and middle class progressive activists, Hillary Clinton is seen as hopelessly aligned with the establishment activists, with the insider activists, with the wealthy activists, with the well-connected activists, and with every possible progressive activist "elite" you can possibly imagine. Is it thus in any way surprising that the activist base, which is largely on the outside looking in, generally does not harbor much positive feeling toward her? The progressive activist base considers the progressive activist elite to be the main culprit in progressives losing power around the country. We keep losing, and we blame them. Thus, why should it be a surprise to anyone that we dislike the person who is viewed as their primary representative? We literally hold her, and what she represents within the world of progressive activism, to be responsible for the massive progressive backslide that has taken place over the past twelve years.
Progressives began reading the progressive blogosphere en masse because they were in search of alternative theories on how to achieve Democratic and progressive victory. They were tired of losing to Republicans, and tired of even losing to the more conservative elements of their own party. They blamed the progressive and Democratic leadership for these failures, and started attaching themselves to new institutions, new strategies, new voices, and new leaders. However, now that victory has become quite a bit more regular, for many people the search for alternatives is far less pressing.
This is the exact opposite situation Republicans and conservatives are facing. As such, alternative conservative media outlets are starting to rise faster, or at least decline relatively slower, than progressive media outlets.
Even with all this said, it is worth noting that measuring the size of the progressive and conservative blogospheres has grown far more difficult since people first starting tracking it in 2003. A wider and less universal range of website traffic sources is in use. Some websites, like the Huffington Post, have grown so large that they aren't really even blogs anymore. Other mediums, such as Facebook and Twitter, have risen dramatically in importance, creating a more diversified new media landscape than just "the blogs." As such, measuring the conservative and progressive shares of the new media political market has become increasingly difficult, and soon might be a near impossibility.
Perhaps the best way to compare conservative and progressive performance within new media is to measure the 'spheres by effectiveness, rather than size. How many resources does each 'sphere contribute? Who does a better job controlling political and media narratives? Who brings more people into the process? Which is a larger part of our national cultural? These are not easy questions to answer either, but they might still be a more appropriate direction for analysis of conservative and progressive new media performance to adopt.
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