Given the fuss that political writers and analysts make over the "blogosphere," you'd think the course of the 2008 election will be dictated by a handful of political bloggers whose hourly pronouncements are awaited by the electorate with bated breath.
In fact, with literally millions of people pouring their hearts out on blogs of every political, religious, topical, technical, medical, scientific, literary or sexual persuasion, it's a wonder that there's anybody left who doesn't blog.
What the blogging world lacks, it seems, is people who want to read all those blogs, especially blogs on politics.
In a January poll conducted online by Harris Interactive, only 22 percent said they read political blogs "regularly," meaning at least "several times a month" and only 7 percent said they read them several times a week or more.
More surprises: Although the young think they invented the online world, they don't use it as much for politics as do their parents.
More than 23 percent of baby boomers and their elders were regular political blog readers, compared with about 18 percent of younger voters. There may be a fairly simple explanation: Older voters are far more likely to actually show up at the polls than younger ones, so they're more likely to read about politics, too.
Republicans, by the way, were more likely than Democrats to be regular political blog rats and more likely to believe that political blogs are valuable sources of information. On the other hand, GOP voters were more likely than Democrats to say they never visit political blogs at all. Make something of that.
One caveat: The Harris Interactive polls, which are conducted online, don't necessarily represent the entire electorate, which would have to include those who aren't regularly online.
So the real influence of political blogs on average voters, as opposed to those with Web access and a high interest in politics, is probably lower than that.
I have a bit more confidence in numbers from the Pew Research Center, whose surveys are more broadly based. Although it didn't address blogs directly, its decade-long project to find where Americans get presidential campaign news found that 24 percent regularly get it from the Internet - almost double the proportion of 2004.
Even so, the percentage who learn something about politics from the Net is significantly lower than the proportion who get information from various newspaper and TV outlets (31 to 40 percent).
