After ranking the biggest right-of-center political websites, I thought it might be interesting to see which left-of-center websites receive the most traffic. So, I went to Alexa and ranked the 50 sites on the left. Do keep in mind that…
1) Alexa doesn’t distinguish between top level domains and their sub-directories. So, for example, a blog on Townhall and Townhall itself would have the same rating. Additionally, websites hosted at places like Blogspot, which list each blog on a sub-directory, can’t be measured. That knocked MSNBC, ABC, and NBC off the list.
2) I also decided to leave newspapers off the list for two reasons. Number one, there are obviously a lot of people reading newspapers for reasons other than political content, so it’s not completely fair to compare a newspaper to let’s say, the Daily Kos, which draws all its readers for political reasons. Number two, since most newspapers lean to the left and a lot of newspapers have large, local readerships, had I included the papers, they would have dominated the list. I’m going to estimate 40 out of the top 50 spot, perhaps more, would have been taken up by newspapers.
3) Although I have found Alexa to be generally accurate, it does occasionally make mistakes and certainly isn’t as on target as a statistics tracker.
4) I didn’t deliberately leave any left-of-center websites off the list other than the ones mentioned. So, if you are supposed to be on the list and weren’t included, feel free to send me an email.
All 50 websites are listed with their Alexa rank following their link. So for example, a “1” would mean the page was the most popular website on the net. A “100,000” would mean the 100,000th most popular page on the net. With that being said, let’s go ahead and take a look at the rankings.
1) CNN: 52 2) The Huffington Post: 393 3) Time: 553 4) NPR: 1,524 5) Slate: 1,569 6) Newsweek: 1,690 7) U.S. News & World Report: 2,408 8) Politico: 2,470 9) Salon: 2,455 10) Indy Media: 3,534
11) The Democratic Underground: 6,992 12) The Atlantic: 8,538 13) The Village Voice: 8,922 14) Daily Kos: 10,385 15) Eschaton: 10,496 16) New Yorker: 12,429 17) The Daily Beast: 12,512 18) Alternet: 15,763 19) Common Dreams: 18,144 20) Crooks and Liars: 19,337
21) Buzzflash: 19,423 22) TPM Cafe: 21,592 23) MoveOn: 21,786 24) Mother Jones: 22,277 25) Amnesty International: 23,807 26) Counterpunch: 23,841 27) The Nation: 24,552 28) Antiwar: 24,799 29) Think Progress: 25,168 30) Raw Story: 26,663
31) The New Republic: 26,867 32) Planned Parenthood: 28,207 33) Information Clearing House: 28,605 34) What Really Happened: 31,583 35) OpEdNews: 31,835 36) Bad Subjects: 33,120 37) Political Wire: 34,698 38) World Socialist Website: 35,122 39) ACLU: 37,195 40) Inter-American Commission on Human Rights: 37,494
41) Media Matters: 37,650 42) Feministing: 38,376 43) Truthout: 38,809 44) Drudge Retort: 41,472 45) The American Prospect: 42,082 46) Harper’s Magazine: 42,659 47) Firedoglake: 42,836 48) TruthDig: 44,389 49) Wonkette: 45,704 50) AmericaBlog: 45,195
Honorable Mentions
51) FiveThirtyEight: 46,521 52) The Washington Monthly: 48,238 53) Michael Moore 48,918 54) Bartcop: 48,109 55) Air America: 54,928 56) Oliver Willis: 55,743 57) MyDD: 57,251 58) Center for American Progress: 58,713 59) The Brookings Institute: 61,302 60) Zmag: 65,741
Also see,
The 50 Most Popular Right-Of-Center Websites