Post-election traffic

The post-election let down means many political websites will see a large drop in traffic. Who's done the best at retaining readers? Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com did a quick study of some top political sites using stats from Alexa.com. The list follows:

TheAtlantic.com         125%
DrudgeReport.com        124%
HuffingtonPost.com      109%
NYTimes.com             97%
WashingtonPost.com      82%
FOXNews.com             78%
TalkingPointsMemo.com   71%
DailyKos.com            68%
Slate.com               67%
RedState.com            66%
NationalReview.com      63%
FiveThirtyEight.com     59%
Politico.com            55%
Pollster.com            37%
BarackObama.com         37%
Electoral-Vote.com      30%
RealClearPolitics.com   25%
RasmussenReports.com    15%
Gallup.com              12%
JohnMcCain.com          9%

Let me speculate on some of the numbers. My guess is The Atlantic saw a spike in hits after the election because of its blogs - updates on cabinet appointments and Obama intrigue from Marc Ambinder, which way the broken conservative movement from Ross Douthat and, probably the biggest draw, Andrew Sullivan's updates on California's gay marriage ban.

Drudge Report has probably served two functions - allowing election-fatigued readers to get links to the latest bad economic news and giving anxious conservatives a place to look for dirt on Obama.

FiveThirtyEight kept a large portion of its audience, with readers likely looking for updates on the outstanding Senate races. Silver has also gotten positive attention in the New York Times and elsewhere for his accurate prediction of the election outcome and his book deals.