Just in time for tonight’s debates, our Web-wide tracking study shows that John McCain has pulled ahead online.  For the first time since we started tracking the campaign in mid July, McCain’s messages are  viewed by a larger audience than Obama.

Please see our posts here and here to review our previous findings.

Here are our key findings (through September 24th)

• Thanks to a huge post-convention bounce, McCain took the lead over Obama in overall web traffic for the first time. The online audience viewing McCain’s messages grew 61% faster than Obama’s since the conventions.

• Palin’s convention speech has been viewed by an estimated 18,000,000 online viewers.
• The economy is the most copied issue for both candidates.  Iraq has fallen out of McCain’s top 5 issues for the first time in the campaign.
• While Obama still leads in the blogosphere, his lead has shrunk nearly 43% since the conventions.

Download a .pdf copy of full study and updates on all the charts.   We’ve highlighted a few of  the most interesting below.

True or False? Attributor Investigates Election 2008’s Conventional Wisdom

Conventional Wisdom: TV viewership follows the same pattern as views of online content.

Attributor says . . . False

While TV is still king in terms of total audience, the web is substantial and shows different results.  Online, the McCain and Palin speeches combined attracted an additional 35 million views of the speech text after the convention.  Palin’s speech alone garnered almost 20 million versus Obama’s 11 million.

Conventional Wisdom: By virtue of his appeal to a younger demographic, Obama is reaching a larger audience online. 

Attributor says . . . False  For the first time, McCain has surpassed Obama online.

McCain’s huge boost from his and Palin’s convention speeches now place him above Obama.   Since the convention, McCain’s online audience grew 61% faster than Obama’s.

Conventional Wisdom: Americans discount negative campaigning as “politics” and don’t pay much attention to it.

Attributor says . . . False

The rapidly increasing online negative campaigning on McCain’s behalf is paying off. People are reading the attacks- and in significant numbers. In September, almost 5 million people viewed attacks on Obama, compared to the roughly 3 million people who viewed attacks on McCain- almost 2:1

Download a .pdf copy of the latest study.