Election Websites

Since I have recently been exploring new sites with the aid of Alexa's new Related Links, I've been encouraged to see that sites providing political information have been receiving spikes in traffic of late. An informed citizen is the sort I'd rather have voting, and in the twenty-first century, there's plenty of information a click away for those who take their democratic responsibilities seriously.

I've been visiting FactCheck.org every couple of days. The advantage of a non-partisan organization de-spinning candidates' statements is a gift from the Internet Age. This site's Reach has increased 114% when you compare the last three months of traffic to the previous three. Predictably, spiked occur when big political events happen, such as the recent Presidential Debate. Posted the day after the debate, FactCheck's blow-by-blow breakdown of the misleading or erroneous statements of both candidates has apparently been of use to many other than myself.

Another election-year resource on the web that I've found handy is Project Vote Smart's website. This site aggregates all sorts of hard data about lawmakers: public statements, voting records, biographical information, campaign finances, and ratings of various interest groups to name a few. Though their Voter's Self-Defense Manual has been and continues to be an invaluable paper resource, the website provides a bounty of information about all things politics. Their Reach has increased 318% in the second half of the past six months.

Of course, for those political junkies who need a daily fix of if-the-election-were-held-today, there are at least two sites (thanks, Related Links) dealing with the electoral college map. I knew about Electoral-vote.com, but have identified 270ToWin.com as a competing site. While each of them predicts an Obama victory at this stage of the game, based on state-by-state polling data, they have some different ideas about the likely/possible vote count.

Which sites do you find indispensable in the quest for election facts and fun? Do their Related Links lead to new favorites?

Alexa's New Related Links

I'm very excited to tell you about Alexa's new and improved Related Links. For the last few months we have been toiling away developing devious new algorithms to tease better related links out of our Web crawl. While I can't divulge the secret sauce, I can say that the work paid off in a big way.

If you have an Alexa Toolbar or Sparky (everybody does, right?) then you can really enjoy the full benefit of the related links and start to discover more content on the web that you may find interesting. Just go to your favorite site, look at your toolbar, and see what's related; click it, and go.

If you use Alexa for more serious pursuits, such as identifying competition or planning a marketing campaign, you will find that the related links are much more on target than before. To see the related links you should either install an Alexa Toolbar, or you can go to an Alexa detail page for any site and click "Related Links".

[The above was written by Geoff Mack. Below is an addendum by Kelly Dragoo.]

Sometimes, there's just as much fun happening just a click away of which you're not even aware. I'm a big fan, for example, of lolcats. Especially since I got a puppy of my own, I take immense pleasure in photos of pets with funny, misspelled text. Imagine my joy, upon testing the new Related Links for ICanHasCheezburger, at discovering I Has a Hot Dog! Thank you, Related Links!

I also love catty commentary on celebrities and pop culture. I've been a long-time fan of The Fug Girls, but their Related Links have given me a new obsession: The Superficial. (I'll bet my boss, Geoff who wrote the above, is thrilled that our new, improved Related Links have given me more ways to goof off at my desk!)

Of course, not all of life is funny photos of pets. With the coming U.S. presidential election in November, I have been following a lot of political and news sites, trying to separate the spin from the facts. I have made frequent use of FactCheck, a non-partisan resource for distilling politics to something closer to reality than campaign promises. However, since last time I found it helpful, I had completely forgotten about OpenSecrets.org; this likewise nonpartisan site is immensely helpful when it comes to following the money that influences policy and elections, and I was reminded of it in FactCheck's Related Links. But I didn't even know about another Related Link Electoral-vote.com. This website predicts electoral votes for each state based on polling data. They even have a page comparing this day in 2008 to the same day in 2004--the possibilities for nail-biting are endless!

So whether you use them for work or for play, give the new Related Links a whirl and let us know what you think.

Presidential Campaign Events and Web Traffic

With the U.S. presidential election season now in high gear, I've been interested in events that are a part of the process and how they drive web traffic. Which events on the campaign trail drive which surfers to which sites? Sometimes, an official campaign site of Senator Obama or Senator McCain will get the traffic; other times, it's political blog/forum websites that get the bump.

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, the official site of Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, is generally more popular than that of his Republican rival Senator John McCain. The graph to the right is an un-smoothed version of the last month to show specific dates when there was a spike in traffic to either site.

Right about August 22, when Obama announced Senator Joe Biden as his running mate, there was a huge spike of traffic to his campaign's official website. Because there were reports that some who were hoping to receive a text message of the candidate's Vice Presidential pick, but had not, some of this might be due to their hoping to find the answer there instead of on their cell phones. While I was interested in his pick, I did not opt for the cell phone option, and can probably be counted among those who spiked traffic to his site around that time, hoping to learn his choice. The second spike in traffic, in the following week, is likely related to various excitement generated by that week having been the Democratic National Convention.

I note that the only spike of note to McCain's official site happened about the same time as that second one to Obama's site. Were his followers hoping he'd steal some convention thunder and reveal his Vice Presidential pick at that time? Were they looking for some red meat rebuttal to the charges leveled against the Republicans during the course of the Convention?

Another interesting thing to observe is when McCain did announce his running mate, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, on August 29th, a Friday. While there was a big of increased activity to McCain's official site, the most interesting bump was when those who had not bothered since Friday to visit the Alaska Governor's site managed to do so on Monday, September the first. You can see this in the second graph, as well as the reasonably anticipated bump during that same week to McCain's official site during the Republican National Convention.


The graph I find most interesting is one comparing what I believe to be fairly equivalent sites on the right and left: Townhall.com and Dailykos.com. In this un-smoothed graph of a full three months of traffic, all of which has included the campaign season, primaries, etc., there's one spike that stands out. Around September 1st, after the news had settled in, all the righties and the lefties were talking about Palin.

Sometimes, a campaign's official announcements can drive traffic to its website. Other times, a significant (even historic) political development gets tongues (or keyboards) wagging all over the blogs created for political junkies. Do you see any significant spikes that correspond to a date of import in the recent months of these campaigns? Am I missing a place where others might go to discuss surprising developments like McCain's selection of Governor Palin? Let us know in the comments.