The centre has, it seems, fallen. Again.

Henry Farrell has a new paper on blogs, blog readers and political polarisation (Pdf here). Finding:

First – blog readers seem to exhibit strong homophily. That is to say, they overwhelmingly choose blogs that are written by people who are roughly in accordance with their political views. Left wingers read left wing blogs, right wingers read right wing blogs, and very few people read both left wing and right wing blogs. Those few people who read both left wing and right wing blogs are considerably more likely to be left wing themselves; interpret this as you like. Furthermore, blog readers are politically very polarized. They tend to clump around either the ‘strong liberal’ or the ‘strong conservative’ pole; there aren’t many blog readers in the center.

Yay! Another minority to join: non-lefty readers of right-wing and left-wing blogs… Readers here tilt right I guess, though there are, I know, some only vaguely reconstructured former communists and other remnants of the soi-disant radical left who check in fairly frequently…