The 50 Most Popular Liberal Websites

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.

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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