• The Age, Thursday, March 1, 2012 3 AM

Interest in the dramatic race to the top in Australian politics is pushing the needle on “most read” stories published by Fairfax Media, with a preliminary figure of 2.03 million reads of the live blog covering the contest between Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.

That is inching close to the highest-ever readership for a single story across the network, which includes smh.com.au, theage.com.au, brisbanetimes.com.au and watoday.com.au. The as Quanta’s decision to ground its aircraft, read 2.2 million times.

The sites saw a surge in traffic on Monday at around midday in the immediate aftermath of the caucus ballot with more than 100,000 people simultaneously visiting smh.com.au alone via their desktop computers and mobile phones.

Definitive figures will not be known for another week but Fairfax executives hope the Rudd v Gillard contest will cumulatively surpass previous records.

Read the whole story at The Age »