A long and dramatic Presidential campaigning season has been a boon for nearly every media outlet, but the widespread fascination with the 2008 race may have created some real winners for those covering politics online.

According to a MediaWeek story, the sector has seen huge growth over the last year. While online extensions of established media brands have performed well -- MSNBC.com added 13 million unique visitors over the period, while CNN raked in about 6.4 million uniques -- the niche political sites have seen almost astronomical gains. HuffingtonPost.com grew by 457 percent to 7.5 million uniques. Politico and Real Clear Politics also enjoyed big gains.

While there is likely to be some drop-off after the Nov. 4 election, it isn't expected to be one that will hurt the growth of the sector.

"I'm not all that concerned about post-election," said Jeremy Steinberg, VP of digital sales and business development at FoxNews.com, adding that engagement metrics like visits per user, pages per user and average time spent were all up this year. "People that are coming in and finding us are staying. If we had seen a drop-off in engagement, I might be concerned."