Election '06: More Republicans Online Than Dems

There’s some interesting stuff from Nielsen/NetRatings today on Web user’s political affiliations. None of it is especially eye-opening. I mean, did anybody think the Village Voice and New York Times sites wouldn’t attract more Democrats than Republicans, or that RushLimbaugh.com and the Wall Street Journal Online wouldn’t draw more Republicans than Democrats? Didn’t think so.

Well, here’s the rundown:

36.6 percent of U.S. adults online are Republicans
30.8 percent are Democrats.
17.3 percent are Independents.

Sites with highest concentration of Republicans:
RushLimbaugh.com (84.8 percent)
NewsMax.com and Bill O’Reilly.com (both 65.4 percent)
The Drudge Report (59.0)
Salt Lake Tribune (57.9(

Sites with highest concentration of Democrats:
BlackAmericaWeb.com (79.9 percent)
AOL BlackVoices (64.8 percent)
BET.com (58.6 percent)
Salon.com (55.3 percent)
Village Voice (55.2 percent)

Newspaper Partisans?
WSJ.com readership is predominantly Republican.
A majority of New York Times site readers are Democrats.

Political Leanings of Web Users:
36.1 percent are Moderate.
32.5 percent are Conservative/Very Conservative.
19.8 percent are Liberal/Very Liberal.

In the release, Nielsen/NetRatings analyst Ken Cassa attributes the Republican Web majority to the fact that there are more of them in the overall electorate. Oh, and don’t forget households with more money, i.e. the folks with computers and Internet connections, tend to skew right.