NO, IT'S NOT ANYWHERE NEAR 40%

(h/t POLITICO)

The Pew Center for Excellence in Journalism has just released a report on Online News.   Pew used 3 different sources to rank the top 25 news sites: Nielsen, comScore and Hitwise.  Despite American conservatives insistence that they are a plurality of Americans, there is no evidence for that claim from online behavior.

Nielsen found that Fox News is 6th in unique visitors, just a little behind the NYT but only about half the number that MSNBC gets.

comScore has Fox News at 21st, far behind more popular sites such as CNN or AOL.

Hitwise has Fox News ranked 5th, still behind MSNBC and CNN.

These numbers are consistent with an earlier Pew report that found only about 9% of Americans are hard-core conservatives.