Election Blogging

The top stories in the blogosphere are often an eclectic mix of topics from technology and pop culture to science and war. But last week, with the 2010 midterm elections looming, each of the top five subjects focused on the election or a closely related subject — the economic issues helping define the campaign.

For the week of Oct. 4-8, two of the top five stories on blogs were connected directly to the election according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Last week, 17% of the links in blogs highlighted two stories about the 2010 campaign. One was an Oct. 4 Washington Post piece about interest groups spending far more in this election cycle than in the 2008 campaign. The other was an Oct. 5 Washington Post story about how the political landscape remains strongly tilted toward Republicans.

Another 11% of the links concerned a major force in the 2010 political landscape — the Tea Party movement. The debate was generated by Sen. Sherrod Brown’s (D-OH) op-ed in the Oct. 3 USA Today arguing that Tea Party populism is driven by anger at the government and divides the country, and is therefore not real populism, which fights for all Americans.