BNP site gets most political hits

The far right website gets seven times more visitors than Labour's website, and three times more than the Tories' much-promoted effort.

The BNP's website attracts more than half of all internet traffic to political party sites, according to Hitwise, an online monitoring firm.

Robin Goad, research director at Hitwise, said: "Visits to a political party's website are not the same thing as votes in an election.

"This is borne out by the fact that the BNP has occupied its position as the most visited political party website for two years, but hasn't managed to translate this into electoral success.

"One explanation for the site's popularity may be that people are using it as an 'alternative' news source."

He said many visitors to the BNP website would be driven by curiosity rather than political beliefs.

Last month MPs called on social-networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace to ban the BNP from spreading its material on their pages.

With 18 per cent of visits to the top ten political party websites, the Conservative Party's homepage is the most popular of the mainstream parties; in August 2007 it received 150 per cent more visits than Labour's homepage.

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