Concurrent with record turnout at the polls on Election Day, Americans turned up in big numbers online. U.S. Internet users visited Current Events and Global News sites at a rate 27% higher on Election Day than they did on the previous Tuesday. The day after the election, online buzz about President-elect Obama spiked; he was mentioned in nearly 20% of all blog posts at one point. Check out our full release outlining Nielsen Online’s final look at election 2008.

In the final hours of election eve, I decided to run a quick search of the top blogs that have discussed the election and the presidential and vice presidential candidates during the past week in our BuzzMetrics data system (which includes about 80 million blogs). With articles on many major news and marketing sites, I thought it would be particularly interesting to check out where the blog discussion is occurring.

To that end, I conducted three separate searches:

First, I searched the term “election” and linked it with the names of the four major candidates (Republican and Democrat). Interestingly, Huffingtonpost.com, columnist Arianna Huffington’s generalist blog with a noted leftist lean, came out on top, with more than 40% of the total messages (among the top 15 blogs, ranked by number of messages about the topic). Following HuffPo was Dailykos.com, a political blog that claims 2-4 million daily visits, with about 13% of discussion within total messages (among the top 15 blogs). I did a quick profile of each of the top 15 blogs to see if they self-identified with a political preference, and among them, seven identify as liberal, whereas six identify as conservative. Two of the blogs did not identify a preference, Jossip.com and Politicalwire.com.

The second search I conducted was the term “election” along with the Democratic candidates, Obama and Biden. HuffPo again ranked first, with more than 40% of discussion, and Dailykos.com again ranked second, with about 10%. While the following 13 blogs shifted position, the same sites top the list overall. And again, after scanning through each blog on the list, seven identify as liberal, six identify as conservative, and two did not identify a preference.

When I ran the third search, (”election” and the Republican candidates, McCain and Palin) I wasn’t sure what would happen. Sure enough, however, the results were similar. Once again, Huffingtonpost.com has the highest volume of discussion with about 45%, Dailykos.com claims about 10% of discussion, and the following 13 blogs are almost all same as in the previous two searches, (seven liberal, six conservative, and two without identification).

So what does this mean? For me, some of the key takeaways are as follows:

• More self-identified “liberal” sites rank in the top 15 than “conservative” ones, though the numbers are pretty evenly split, with 7 liberal sites for each of the three searches, and 6 conservative sites for each of the three searches.
• Popular political blog Drudgereport.com is not on the list, and neither is Gawker.com, a Jossip.com competitor.
• Despite the search terms, the same list appears (though in different order) - apparently the candidates and political affiliation matter less than the discussion of the election in general.
• If online advertising is such a game changer this year (and, I assume, in years to follow), advertisers should note that both liberal and conservative bloggers are posting actively and to a similar degree - and neither should be overlooked.

After nearly two years of campaigning, umpteen focus groups, myriad polls, and lively discussions about plumbers, wardrobes, flag pins and, yes, even the economy…we are approaching the finish line. In the end, though, the only thing that really counts will be counted on Tuesday, as Americans head to the voting booth. But while we still could, Nielsen Online took a look at online metrics around the campaigns - including site traffic, video use and buzz. And while we eagerly await Tuesday’s outcome, we are already wondering how the 2012 campaigns will differ as it relates to the Web, video and social media in particular. We’ll be measuring!

I’ve been on the road during the past week presenting about online advertising trends at our annual client meetings. With the current macroeconomic climate, you can imagine that a few of my slides are pretty grim. Not wanting to be a complete downer, I threw in some interesting tidbits about the presidential election.

The graphic that has consistently drawn a reaction is featured below. Since July, Obama has placed 2.1 billion display impressions online, spread out over more than 200 unique ad creatives and 400 web properties. What’s even more stunning is that he’s out-gunned McCain with 23 times the impressions over that time period.

You’ll also note that Obama’s major online push happened not during the Democratic or Republican conventions, but pretty much just as the stock market imploded and popular sentiment was swinging back toward the Democratic nominee. Interesting timing, to say the least.

After what felt like the longest primary season ever – maybe because it was – the parties have selected Senators John McCain and Barack Obama as their candidates for the November presidential election. Over the next several months, we’ll be measuring and analyzing how the campaigns use the Internet – in particular brand (candidate) sites, social media, video and online advertising – to communicate messages and attract votes. We released the first look yesterday. My prediction?…It’s going to be interesting!