Our new Statcounter premium account enables us to pay close attention to which subjects draw the most page views. This is unique political intel on what makes Maryland’s cyberspace buzz! And as usual, we provide it to our esteemed readers free of charge. Who loves you more than we do?
Among the 100,000 page views we drew between May 30 and August 23, here are the most-viewed blog posts:
1. Pols Party While Budget Burns
2. More Warnings of State Budget Apocalypse
3. How to Save Money on Your Electric Bill Right Now
4. People with Development Disabilities at Risk of Losing Services
5. Is WMATA Management Starting to Crack?
6. The MACO Moment
7. Young Guns of MoCo Part Two
8. MACO Mushroom Cloud
9. Young Guns of MoCo Part Four
10. Funniest Facebook Status of the Day
11. Ten Random Questions
12. Saqib Ali and Nancy King Discuss Progressive Issues Part Two
13. Eli El’s Domestic Abuse Record
14. Democrats for Pelura
15. Single Tracking is a Terrible Idea Except When it’s a Good One
16. Red Line Opposition is Good News for MoCo Transit Supporters
17. Saqib Ali and Nancy King Discuss Progressive Issues Part One
18. Is Leggett Undermining Navarro on Day One?
19. Why CCT Supporters Should Give BRT a Chance
20. Dereck Davis vs. Jim Rosapepe on Electricity Reregulation
Now here’s something interesting. What are people searching for on MPW? We found out the search terms used by people to find MPW content, usually on Google, and combined it with the terms that had the greatest number of searches once people arrived on the blog. Now in most cases, people searched on “Maryland Politics Watch,” “Maryland political blog” or some variant thereof to find us. We excluded those terms since they are little more than identifiers for MPW. Here are the remaining terms that drew the greatest number of searches to and inside this blog:
1. Montgomery
2. WSSC
3. Saqib Ali
4. Budget
5. Pagnucco
6. Taxes
7. Facebook
8. Blair Ewing
9. O’Malley
10. MACO
11. Boy King
12. Purple Line
13. Baltimore
14. Sligo Golf
15. Electric Bill
16. I-270
17. Eli El
18. Slots
19. Helicopter
20. Cheryl Kagan
What a list! This is what caught our eye:
WSSC
The MSM may occasionally relax their coverage on WSSC, but the issue never goes away. Discontent with WSSC is always simmering because people constantly struggle with perpetual matters like dirty water, small outages, street repaving problems and the like that really add up. Then when a big pipe bursts, the frustration boils over.
Here’s a prediction: if County Executive Ike Leggett draws a quality challenger and someone dies because of another River Road-style pipe break, that challenger will make major hay by framing it as a failure of leadership. You read it here first.
Saqib Ali
We all knew he was the King of Facebook, but it turns out that Saqib Ali is the Emperor of all on-line media. He has surely earned that title with his serial Facebook updates, Twitterings and constant MSM and blog coverage. We’ll see if his cyber-domination can actually translate into enough votes to beat District 39 Senator Nancy King if he challenges her.
Helicopter
The MSM may have woken up to the County Executive’s helicopter grab late, but this is a sleeper issue. It symbolizes the sort of county government cluelessness that first materialized during the $65,000 bathroom scandal. People are paying a LOT more attention to this than anyone in the Executive Branch wants.
Cheryl Kagan
Her hyper-charged insurgent campaign for Jennie Forehand’s District 17 Senate seat is drawing lots of interest. No current challenger equals her energy at the moment. This is yet another sign that Forehand has a big, big race on her hands.
We’ll have more exclusive intel on our next batch of 100,000 page views, probably in the fall. Stay tuned!