Still, the traffic gains are impressive, given the relatively small followings some of the political blogs had a year ago.
Ranked as the largest political site, The Huffington Post grew more than fivefold to 4.5 million unique visitors in September, compared to 792,000 a year ago. TalkingPointsMemo, run by political blogger Josh Marshall, enjoyed the biggest audience bump, going from just 32,000 to 458,000.
Politico, the site started last year and led by ex-Washington Post political reporters John Harris and Jim VandeHei, has increased fourfold to 2.4 million.
Other sites that have dramatically expanded audiences included RealClearPolitics, RedState.com and Newsbusters.org. The challenge for all these sites, of course, will be to maintain some portion of the traffic gains after the election.--Mark Walsh