• by Paul Gough , October 29, 2003

A new study by RoperASW, ahead of what promises to be a busy election year, finds that half of the NYTimes.com users are opinion leaders who are highly engaged in their communities and well versed in politics.

RoperASW's name for these opinion leaders are "influentials," the 10 percent of the population who pretty much shapes the attitudes of the rest of us. Influentials make up 15 percent of the online population. More than 2,400 NYTImes.com users took part in the study, which follows a 2001 survey that found 43 percent of NYTimes.com users were classified as influentials.

Ninety percent of influentials said they were likely to vote in the upcoming presidential election and 62 percent said they were more likely to support a campaign financially, compared to 25 percent of non-influentials. Forty-four percent of the influentials said they would start focusing on candidates and issues in the first three months of 2004 and 20 percent said they would in the summer when the two major political parties hold conventions.

Jason Krebs, vice president of advertising at NYTimes.com, said that the results of the study are important because of how crucial the quality of a media property's audience is.

"This is a further validation of the quality of our audience," Krebs said Wednesday afternoon.