… We’d say a big thank you to the 47,689 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in August.

Though that’s a touch down on our July figure of c.50,000, it’s up some 143% on the equivalent figure for August ’09 of c.20,000.

This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 Sept 2009 – 31 August 2010) to 636,846, some 89% higher than the equivalent figure for 2008-09 of 336,902.

The 5 top-read stories during the month were:

1. Knowsley Council pays Labour over £250,000 for conference appearances (11) by Mark Pack
2. Coalition puts up strong defence on IFS report (84) by Iain Roberts
3. Tim Farron MP writes … Labour’s staggering hypocrisy on the Alternative Vote (66) by Tim Farron MP
4. Opinion: why we should wish Labour well (102) by George Kendall
5. Those Kennedy defection rumours (38) by Iain Roberts

And the top 5 traffic sources for Lib Dem Voice in July were:

• Google
• Twitter
• Daily Email alerts
• Guido Fawkes
• Facebook.com

Whether you’re a regular here, or an occasional ‘popper-by’, we’re delighted you looked in.

• If you want to keep up-to-date with LDV in the future, then why not sign up for our daily email alerts: easy-to-navigate links to LDV articles delivered to your inbox every morning;
• If you enjoy reading LDV, why not try writing for LDV?
• If you’re a party member, don’t forget to check out our private members’ forum, which also includes being polled for our regular members’ surveys;
• And if you value LDV’s work throughout the year, please consider making a donation to our running costs: this is a not-for-profit website, and the whole team donates their time and effort free of charge. Any money you choose to give will help make LDV even better in the future.

* Google Analytics’ term: it broadly means people using about 48,000 different computers visited LDV at least once. Some people may be counted more than once (eg, home and work computer), whilst some people may not be counted (eg, two different people use the same computer, or someone reads the site through a feed reader without ever actually visiting it).