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If you were to believe ... well, the political blogger hype, you'd swear they were the hottest news sources on the planet for you American election coverage for the race for the White House. Yet recent poll results from Harris Interactive found that isn't the case.

Results of the poll found that 22 percent of people responding read blogs on a regular basis, which was defined by several times a month or more.

The survey also found that 56 percent responding said they never read a blog in connection to politics, while 23 percent said they did a few times a year.

As far as political parties go, Repubicans read blogs slightly more than their Democrat counterparts, with 22 percent of Republicans saying they read blogs, while 20 percent of Democrats affirmed they did.

One interesting finding of the study was that contrary to popular thinking, political blogs aren't read by younger people primarily, but the majority were 44 years of age and older, accounting for 49 percent of the total. Of that amount, 26 percent were older than 63.

This isn't surprising, when history shows younger people tend to take less interest in politics and vote in fewer numbers than those that are older.

It's also not surprising in that social networks are increasingly populated by older users, as the average age is rising at a fast pace. That's contrary to a number of people I still see erroneously writing about them being a place where youth primarily hang out. The average age of MySpace (NYSE: NWS-A) and Facebook users are somewhere in the mid-30s; much higher than they originally started out.

I'm not sure that this is a big deal in and of itself, as major political blogs do wield a tremendous influence, and the core base of both parties are those more than likely to continue reading them. The influence comes from many of the mainstream media outlets checking out the blog coverage and reiterating that in their broadcasts. Of course it's the other way around at times as well.

The major difference is people can comment and let their thoughts be known about the particular story or coverage presented on the blog.

I did find the assertion of the writer of this Reuters article bordering on the laughable though, as she said mainstream media didn't "adopt a specific point of view," while blogs did. She also added that critics of blogs (mainstream media?) say they don't check their facts or use unreliable sources.

That sounds like the mainstream media to me as much as anything. Of course there's some sloppy reporting going on in the blogosphere, but so is there in the mainstream media. The problem with a lot of the mainstream media is they cover it up better.