• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, December 30, 2015

Americans may hate their politicians, but they love their political news, judging by the success of online publishers focusing on doings inside the Beltway. On that note, political news publisher The Hill enjoyed the strongest growth in its total audience over the last year among a group of 114 publishers tracked by SimilarWeb, the measurement and analytics firm announced this week.

The Hill’s total number of unique visitors increased 72% from 9.2 million in November 2014 to 15.9 million in November 2015, according to SimilarWeb, which pointed out that this increase is especially noteworthy, as over the same period the total traffic volume for the group of 114 U.S. news publishers it tracks actually decreased 14%.

The November figures cap a strong year for the political news site, which has launched a number of new content verticals in recent months, including Cybersecurity and National Security. Back in August the political news site had 11.4 million unique visitors, according to Google Analytics, up 160% over the same period last year.

Meanwhile, according to SimilarWeb, second place for November traffic (in terms of proportional growth) went to Tech Times, which saw its traffic grow 69%, and third place went to Bustle, targeting millennial women, which jumped 65%. Conservative news and opinion publisher Breitbart increased 55%, the revived Newsweek was up 32%, hipster news juggernaut Vice was up 25%, and the New York Post grew 24%.

It’s also worth noting that online-only publishers are now some of the biggest new sites out there. In terms of absolute traffic volume (as opposed to year-over-year growth) the most visited sites were CNN, with 313 million unique visitors; The New York Times, with 202.8 million; Yahoo News, with 198 million; the Huffington Post, with 190.5 million; Fox News, with 167 million; and BuzzFeed, with 148.6 million.