Election Day 2008: The Best Blogs and Social Media Resources
Update 1 Nov 2008: We’ve added several links. Thanks to Jackie Sheeler for making the first suggestion. Feel free to add more in the comments!
The 2008 US presidential election will be over in about 100 hours (unless Florida can’t make up its mind again).
There are, in fact, other elections as well next Tuesday. But of course we all know the real battle is Obama vs. Palin – er, McCain.
Without further ado (and before the comment firestorm begins below), The Blog Herald presents the best blogosphere and social media destinations to track Election Day 2008, in no particular order:
1. CNN Political Ticker – Yes, it’s a mainstream media site. But it’s also a blog. The differences are so blurry now in 2008 anyway. :) It’s common to see hundreds of comments on a post here as Election Day approaches. You can subscribe to twice-daily email alerts if you don’t want the barrage of zero-hour coverage to disturb your day off from work. Bias: Obama.
2. WordPress Tag Search – Grab the feed for “Election Day,” “Joe the Plumber,” etc. The WP community always has fresh insights, opinions, rumors and rants. Bias: neutral.
3. BlogPulse – Follow hot terms’ ups and downs as the voting results come in en masse. Bias: neutral.
4. Google Blog Search – Recently fitted with a more social homepage, GBS should offer a good mix of the top Election Day stories in the blogosphere. Honorable mention: Technorati Politics channel. Bias: neutral.
5. Memeorandum – A highly addictive memetracker portal to political news, with heavy emphasis on blogs. Bias: neutral.
6. Election 2008 on Twitter – Hypnotic auto-refreshing river of Twitter updates having to do with this year’s elections. Think it’s moving fast now? Just wait until Tuesday. Bias: neutral … but Twitter users on the whole sem to favor Obama.
7. Official Barack Obama Blog and Official John McCain Blog – Can’t go wrong getting bloggy news straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. Bias: duh.
8. BlogCatalog Politics Channel – Includes blogger discussions, groups, a blog directory and search capabilities. Bias: neutral.
9. UStream.TV – Live video from all over the place. Bias: neutral.
10. The Caucus – Another mainstream-slash-new media source of great info and perspective. By The New York Times. Bias: Obama.
11. The Huffington Post – The number one blog in the world as ranked by Technorati. Bias: Obama.
12. Daily Kos – Another gigantic political blog that will be liveblogging the whole Election Day. Bias: Obama.
13. Think Progress – “Think Progress is a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. The Center for American Progress Action Fund is a nonpartisan organization. With the blog, CAPAF seeks to provide a forum that advances progressive ideas and policies.” Bias: Obama.
14. The Daily Dish – By Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic. Bias: Obama.
15. Talking Points Memo – By Joshua Micah Marshall. Bias: Obama.
16. Michelle Malkin – One of the best conservative voices. Bias: McCain.
17. Ben Smith – Politico.com blog covering all sides of election news. Bias: Neutral, I think. Correct me if I’m wrong.
18. The Corner – From the National Review. Bias: McCain.
19. Crooks and Liars – By John Amato. Bias: Obama.
Which one of these resources is your favorite? What others would you recommend?
And who are you voting for and why? ;)
Image from The Situationist
this is a great list, with one unforgivable omission: where’s dailykos.com? they will be liveblogging the election, they have funded and managed 100 independent polls during the campaign season, and they’ve got a slate of fantastic writers keeping it all real. that’s my must-visit blog on election day. (after i vote, of course!)
Jackie, I’ll update the post. You’re absolutely right. I hope it’s not unforgivable once it’s in there. :) Thanks!
Seen this one? Live Labs is experimenting with tracking politics in real-time and teasing out trends.
http://socialstreams.livelabs.com/politics
Uh, the NYTimes Caucus does not bias towards Obama. The editorial page of the NYTimes endorsed Obama. It has nothing to do with any of the news or blogs.
Also there is nothing ‘best’ about Michelle Malkin. Instead of linking to liars, and partisan idiots, like Malking and the Huffington Post (both right and left have their own liars) why not post links to Paul Krugman or Peggy Noonan. Not the fanatics on the fringe.
This is clearly the most balanced and unbiased … and often relied upon by nearly all of the 15 above:
http://www.procon.org
BlogPulse is definitely great :)
My favorite resource is http://www.RealClearPolitics.com where I think the coverage is very balanced and very informative.
I write my own political observations at President Picker:
http://blog.PresidentPicker.com
Another great resource is http://twittervotereport.com. You can watch the election, see problems, and see reports of issues on this site. I think it’s going to come in handy for a lot of people tomorrow.
Awesome, thanks everyone. Keep ’em comin’.
Been ramping up on my political knowledge prior to tomorrows vote at Howcast.com. Check out their politics videos and get educated about politics and citizenship in this great nation!
Check out NowPublic’s live coverage of social media and the US election. We’ve linked to your post as well.
http://nowpublic.com/culture/social-media-mania-and-us-election-best-links-resources
Best,
Jarrett Martineau
NowPublic.com