Polls suggest Palin's star is fading; but don't forget, she did wonders for our base too

Markos analyzes some polls showing Palin not doing as well as she was a week ago, by a long shot. And one point the media hasn't realized yet - Palin energized our side too. Above is a chart of our monthly traffic, visitors (yellow) and page views (yellow plus orange) over the past four months. Note that halfway into this month, it's September 15, we're already where we were at the end of each of the past four months. That's due to the Republican convention and Palin. Why do I say that? Check out the daily traffic, below.



The week of August 25 was the Democratic Convention. As you'll see in the chart above, traffic bumped up a little - to around 73,000 readers a day and 80,000 page views a day - but not a bump to write home about. Then on Friday August 29, the day after the Democratic Convention finished, and a day that is traditional our worst week day of traffic, our traffic spikes. That morning, John McCain announced Sarah Palin as his pick. Our traffic spiked on that day to 92,000 visitors and 100,000 page views. (Note that I copied the chart at around 5pm Eastern on Sept 15, so that day's results aren't reported in full.)

The next week was the GOP convention. Our traffic that week, with all the Plain controversies flying in the news, our traffic jumped to around 150,000 readers a day and 160,000 page views a day - compared to the 73,000 and 80,000 we saw during the Democratic convention. Palin doubled our traffic, and last week our traffic is still 65% higher than it was during the Democratic convention.

So, yes, Palin has done wonders for the base of the Republican party. She's done wonders for the base of our party too.