Hmmm, as much as I'm happy with the out come of the last election, and as much as I'm a faithful reader of half-a-dozen blogs, I think it's silly to assume that a difference of 1.5 links per page had anything to do with how it turned out.

I think the left leaning blogs did themselves (How about that bile Kos spews daily?) more harm than the Republicans last year, and that's why they failed. The absurdity of the whole thing is that they didn't learn anything from it, which is how Dean got the be the party head.

It's the Instapundit effect!

"I think it's silly to assume that a difference of 1.5 links per page had anything to do with how it turned out."

Billy - you're talking about a difference of 10%, which is greater than the difference in votes between Bush and Kerry.

Of course, there's lots of information left out: What's the aggregate number of visitors to the two groups of blogs? How many of these are repeat visitors? etc.

-S

I hate to characterize blogs (or anything else) simplisticly as 'conservative' or 'liberal', but for this comment the simplification will do.

Conservative blogs may link more, but in my opinion that's not why they are more widely read and more influential.

Most (not all) liberal blogs are;

a) far more vitriolic. Visit Eschaton or Kos's site and feel the hatred drip off of many of the posts. Read the comments, many of which are rabid, juvenile profanity spewing garbage that doesn't argue any point, but just engages in name calling.

b) far more in lockstep with their outlook. They mostly seem to have this 'college freshman took a poli-sci class from some 60's leftover and read a Chomsky book, now I'm an expert' type of world view.

c) Less willing to tolerate views not totally in synch with their own. Just go to one of these sites and post a polite, thought out comment. Don't be a troll, just go against the grain and see how you are responded to.

The so called conservative sites seem to be much more intellectually independent. They are more thoughtfully written and wide ranging in subject matter. It's not all 'hate Chimpy-Bush-Hitler-McHalliburton" or "America is the root of all evil and the Jesus-Nazi rethuglicans are the cause man."
Perhaps I stereotype, but that type of drool is all too common 'over there.'
The quality of the comments in conservative blogs seem to be better too. (don't break your arm patting yourself on the back, Tim)

I'll take the so called conservative sites any day. And if the liberal sites ever raise their level of thought, I'll read them too. But I'm not holding my breath.

I have deep misgivings about this study as it is reported. Very little is mentioned about what kind of hyperlinks are from each type of blog. Do conservatives link to news stories and liberals link to each other? Do conservatives link to liberal sites more than liberals link to conservative sites?

I can't accept that the reason conservative blogs did so much better than liberal blogs is because they link more. Certainly not with the limited amount of information we were given here.