BNP Leader Nick Griffin once again found himself at the centre of some controversy yesterday when his invite to a Buckingham Palace garden party was retracted by royal officials amidst accusations of politicking.

In particular, the Palace was said to be uncomfortable about an article authored by Mr Griffin on the BNP website asking for members suggestions for topics to raise with the Queen.

The claim:

In the ensuing round of media appearances made by the far-right leader, he got Full Fact’s attention by telling the BBC news channel that his party’s website was “more popular than all the other parties’ websites put together”.

Can it really be the case that a party that finished a distant fifth with only 1.9 per cent of the vote at this year’s general election enjoys such dominance on the web?

Analysis:

The idea isn’t as far fetched as it might at first appear. A 2007 report by online intelligence company Hitwise did indeed find that the BNP website received more traffic than all the other political parties combined.

However if three years is a long time in politics, it is even longer in technology, so has anything changed in the intervening period?

Full Fact contacted Hitwise to find out, and whilst we were told that they no longer produce the report on political parties, Research Director Robin Goad was happy to fill in the gaps.

“The BNP have traditionally relied on the web for contacting and organising members because they lack the presence ‘on the ground’ of the other parties,” he said.

“But the advent of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter have really boosted the major parties’ online reach – particularly since they were used to such good effect by Barack Obama in [the Presidential Election of] 2008 – so we’d certainly expect the BNP’s share to have fallen since 2007,” he added.

According to Alexa, the most commonly-used traffic ranking system for websites, the BNP still holds a comfortable lead over other parties.

Whilst it is the 2,699th most visited site in the UK, Labour is 7,166th, the Conservatives are only 8,744th, and the Liberal Democrats languish at 14,371st in the UK rankings (as of July 23rd 2010).

However these rankings measure more than simply hits, making it hard to gauge whether or not Nick Griffin is correct to say that his party beats the combined traffic of all his political opponents.

Another online monitoring company, Compete, also measures the popularity of various political websites, and allows users to view each by traffic alone. This paints a very different picture for Nick Griffin and his party.

As the graph below shows, whilst traffic to the BNP website has grown 15.4 per cent in the last year, this has been eclipsed by both Labour, which has seen a 138 per cent increase in hits over the same period, and the Conservatives, who have enjoyed a massive 290 per cent growth in their website’s popularity.

Consequently, far from outweighing Labour and the Tories combined online clout, the BNP have actually seen their share bested by both parties in the last year, and Tory traffic remains above that of the BNP.

Conclusion:

The British National Party do clearly punch above their weight online, however Mr Griffin’s claim to outstrip rival parties’ combined traffic is beginning to look a little dated.

The increased importance of online campaigning to mainstream parties has seen their share of the web audience jump sharply since 2007, the last point at which Mr Griffin’s claim can be objectively verified.

Whilst the presence of a general election campaign makes the last year in politics exceptional, all present indicators suggest that the BNP has lost ground to other parties, and may even have ceded the top spot.

Full Fact has contacted the BNP to raise these points, but has yet to receive a response.