DCist tends to steer clear of national politics — presidential and congressional. We’d rather focus on all things local. But there are of course political bloggers, like V Street-based Matt Yglesias (at right). And there are a lot of them, with many based in the nation’s capital.

In an article on ClickZ, we learn of a study conducted by Pew Internet & American Life Project and BuzzMetrics, “compared political blog activity, influence and buzz-generation to political coverage in other media.”

From ClickZ:

Blogs were observed across political channels. The study considered 16 conservative and liberal blogs, respectively, and eight general ones. Conservative bloggers made 6,716 unique posts under the data set; liberal pundits wrote 7,151 entries; and neutral blogs had 4,251 unique posts between September 27 and October 31, 2004.

And looking at things like “citizen chatter” on political message boards and forums conservatives have a slight edge over liberals (984,549 posts vs. 947,503 posts). Neutrality in political blogging world is not unheard of, but still not as prevalent as partisan blogging, according to the study. (Neutral citizen chatter only tacked up 98,963 posts.)

Additionally, blog readership and blogging in general continues to climb.