• October 23, 2008

It's no big surprise that political sites are drawing bigger audiences in a presidential election year. The Huffington Post, Politico and TalkingPointsMemo were among the fastest-growing political sites or blogs in the last year, according to comScore.

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