BLOGGER bigdogdotcom, known for his staunch pro-Umno views, is enjoying life in the padi farming community in Jerlun, Kedah.

Not only does he get to help Barisan Nasional candidate Mukhriz Mahathir, run his campaign for the March 8 election, he is also seeing the number of visitors to his blog increase exponentially.

Since Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi called for elections, visitors to his blog have more than doubled to 4,000 a day, he told my paper.

"For an Umno blogger, that's not bad. Not bad at all," said the blogger, who works as an accountant.

He is not alone. Almost every socio-political blogger in Malaysia has enjoyed a surge in attention and are expecting it to continue until polling day.

Web expert and local blog pioneer Terrence Victor Smith, better known as TV Smith, said there has been an approximately 30 per cent spike in the number of unique readers on the Net since Feb 13, the day Parliament was dissolved.

"It's quite unprecedented," he told my paper.

Mr Smith, who runs Malaysia's leading portal and search directory MyCen, said the opposition are well ahead of BN in using blogs and the Net: There are 36 candidates with blogs and 90 per cent of them are from the opposition, he noted.

"Not because the BN candidates are less savvy but because their leaders have been so critical of bloggers, they have to disqualify themselves from using blogosphere as a campaign tool."

However, the ruling coalition seems to be holding its own. mykmu, a pro-Umno, pro-Mahathir portal, which saw an average 20,000 unique visitors daily last year, has seen a surge in traffic.

"We are getting about 80,000 visitors today," mykmu webmaster Mohamad Bakar told my paper.

In the last couple of weeks alone, new sites such as www.pru12.net and www.pru12.com have also been created to reach out to voters.

www.pru12.net, which is promoting BN Selangor's campaign, is already getting about 20,000 visitors after its first week.

At the opposition camp, Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) is well ahead of its allies Parti Keadilan Rakyat and Democratic Action Party. Its globalmediachannel.tv features news from both camps.

"We are reaching out to the urban Netizens, who are more discerning. If we are biased and lean too heavily on either side, we'll lose credibility," said the site's webmaster Sheih Azidi.

Mr Smith, however, said: "It's not quite correct to say that these blogs and sites are a great leveller for the opposition. The mainstream newspapers still have a greater reach to the rural areas and that's where the majority of the voters live."

Still, he believed the higher hits would translate to votes at the ballot box.

"Bloggers and web surfers are not passive readers. They pass on the information to their friends and families."

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