The Numbers

It’s time to update the stereotype; we’re not just “latte-sipping, Mini-driving, sushi-eating” liberals: we are now “Firefox-browsin’” liberals.

At the end of January, I embedded Site Meter in this blog. It shows, among other things, that the percentage of people who use Internet Explorer to read this site has been deteriorating fast — it’s now down to 56% of the total. 29% are using Firefox, and the rest are using other browsers like Safari and Netscape.

Indeed, an article published yesterday says that blogs in general have a higher rate of Firefox usage than the 5-10% measured on the Web as a whole. That’s not too surprising because blog readers tend to be relatively technically savvy.

However, Firefox seems to be significantly more popular among readers of liberal blogs than conservative ones. For example, liberal DailyKos has 39% Firefox, whereas conservative blogs PowerLine and Hugh Hewitt have Firefox usage of half that rate. The share on AndrewSullivan.com has actually declined to 5.4% from 6.3% a couple weeks ago, according to Site Meter.

I guess it’s natural; conservatives resist change by definition. Admittedly though, my analysis is less than scientific — it would be interesting to hear from other bloggers if you are seeing the same trends.

By the way, according to Typepad, as of today Latte has been viewed more than 10,000 times since the first post on November 21. Thanks to all of you for reading Latte, and especially my good friends in New Jersey who made it their homepage, thus substantially boosting the numbers :).