Who Reads International Liberty?

This is the 6th Anniversary of my first post on International Liberty.

In honor of this moment (or at least to recognize a modest amount of endurance), let’s review some data on readership.

According to WordPress, there have been more than 8.7 million page views in that six-year period.

I don’t know if that’s good or bad, so let’s look at some data that’s more interesting.

There’s a site called Flag Counter that monitors the location of readers. I didn’t add it until the end of 2010, and it counts daily viewers rather than total page views, but that’s still plenty of data to see the degree to which people in various states and nations are interested (or disinterested) in my writings.

Far and away, the highest share of readers, relative to the population, can be found in Washington, DC.

I guess that’s no surprise with all the Capitol Hill staff, journalists, and policy wonks in town. And I bet, based on where many DC people live, that partially explains why Virginia is in 2nd place and Maryland in 7th place.

So maybe the most appropriate conclusion is that libertarians and small-government conservatives are most likely to be found in Colorado, Washington, New Hampshire, and Alaska, with honorable mention for New Mexico, Arizona, and Vermont (though the good people in the Green Mountain State are heavily out-numbered by moochers).

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Now let’s look at states where I’m relatively unpopular. Southern states don’t seem to like me, though I wonder if that’s because of lower-than-average levels of Internet access (that being said, Georgia is in 15th place, perhaps out of Bulldawg loyalty).

Shifting to other parts of the nation, Hawaiians don’t seem to be big fans. Neither are people from the Dakotas, or folks in Rhode Island and Delaware.

What about if we look at viewership by nations?

You might think that I’m most widely read in the United States because that’s where I live and work, and the majority of my columns focus on American public policy.

But it turns out that people in the Cayman Islands and Anguilla are actually the most likely to read International Liberty.

I imagine that’s because folks in those places have a keen interest in some of the tax competition issues that I write about. And that also explains why Bermuda, Monaco, BVI, Jersey, and many other so-called tax havens rank so highly for readership.

I’m not quite sure why the U.S. Virgin Islands rank near the top, and I’m similarly perplexed that there are high levels of readership in Guam and the Northern Marianas Islands. Maybe readers from the military?

The high rankings for Canada and the United Kingdom are understandable, if for no other reason than common language.

If I had to pick nations with relatively high proportions of libertarian-leaning readers, then it’s worth noting that Iceland, Slovenia, the Faroe Islands, and Estonia are in the top 20 even though English is a second language.

Of course, just as there are nations that are likely to read International Liberty, there are also places where people don’t seem overly anxious to read my analysis.

By the way, I’ve been told that the Chinese government blocks my blog, perhaps because of this post.

Though China still ranks higher than North Korea. I’ve never had a single visitor from that horribly oppressed nation, or from 13 other jurisdictions.