Right wing dominance of the blogosphere

I'm not really one for indulging in all this Smeargate thing that's been in the media and the political blogosphere lately, but one thing that keeps catching my eye and attention is the repeated factoid that 'Red Rag' the smearblog set up by 10 Downing Street was to challenge the right wing's dominance of the blogosphere and support/encourage left-of centre blogs.

I love lists me, top tens and spreadsheets and rankings and stuff.

Going by technorati blog reactions, the top ten political blogs are:-

1. Iain Dale (7749 reactions)
2. Conservative Home (7367 reactions)
3. Order Order (6732 reactions)
4. Liberal Conspiracy (4206 reactions)
5. Harry's Place (3178 reactions)
6. Lib Dem Voice (3175 reactions)
7. Political Betting (2433 reactions)
8. Devils Kitchen (2152 reactions)
9. Dizzy Thinks (1826 reactions)
10. Bloggerheads (1308 reactions)

This top ten is similar to Wikio's top political blog lists. What struck me is that there isn't much of a right-wing dominance. In fact slim majority might be a better description. If you assume that political betting is apolitical then the balance is:-

Right wing - 5 blogs
Left wing - 4 blogs

With most lefties being Lib-Dem. Its not about the left-right divide, the problem is Labour are shite and just don't feature. The left's represented by the Liberal Democrats. They have something they believe in and something to write about. Labour just have whatever message No 10 pass down, which isn't very much. There's no ideaology.

You knew this already, right?

Further down the rankings, if you go through the top twenty political blogs on wikio, its the same sort of balance (right - 10 blogs : left - 8). Yeah, there's LabourHome, LabourList and Go Fourth, but the left is by far more represented by the Lib Dems than by Labour.

Guido's line about...

In fact the document shows how pathetically weak their whole catch-up strategy is compete with ConservativeHome and Dale. Both of whom are directly referred to in the document. Anyway it reveals some of what Labour was thinking in November.

... misses that Labour needs to play catch up with Lib-Dem blogs not just right wing blogs.

Anyhoo, my point was, that there isn't a Right-wing dominance of the blogosphere, the rankings have it that left and right are pretty balanced, its just Labour don't represent the left wing of the blogosphere.