Political blogging first entered the mainstream consciousness in the buildup to the US Presidential elections in 2004. During the Democratic primaries, Howard Dean's candidacy was dramatically boosted by support from a hitherto unrecognised constituency; bloggers and their readers and commenters. Although he did not win the nomination, he was transformed from an unknown outsider, an obscure outgoing Vermont governor, to a major figure in US politics. He is now chairman of the Democratic party.

In Britain, the influence of blogging on electoral politics has been muted. In the recent Conservative leadership election, few disagree that the pivotal moments were provided by television, not the internet. David Davis' speech at the party conference and the Newsnight focus group were the biggest single events to change the course of the contest. Although conservative blogs provided much commentary on the contest, there's little evidence that they changed the course of the campaign.

Will the Liberal Democrat election campaign be any different? I think, perhaps, it already is. A phenomenon that I have observed recently is the strikingly high level of support for Chris Huhne amongst Lib Dem bloggers. It's certainly not universal, but it's far higher than could be assumed from coverage in the mainstream media. As his campaign builds steam, the support of bloggers may yet play an important role in forming opinions in his favour.

Even before he officially launched his bid, he received support and encouragement to stand. Lynne Featherstone gave a positive impression of him, further boosting his profile. Huhne's willingness to grapple with policy issues has won admiration - perhaps not unexpectedly given that political bloggers are considerably more interested in these things than most party members, let alone members of the public. And failing that, there are those who simply see him as worth a gamble. Indeed, there is now a website entitled Bloggers4Chris which provides a roundup of his supporters in the blogosphere [note: at the time of writing, this site is temporarily unavailable. It should return shortly.]

None of the other candidates appear to have such support from the Lib Dem bloggers. Whether this tells us more about the bloggers than it does about the candidates remains to be seen; Huhne is still the rank outsider and even his supporters hope more than believe that he will win. But, beginning from a very low profile, he has already outlasted one candidate. If he can gain the profile in the mainstream media that he has in the blogs, he may just make a breakthrough and transform the contest into a genuine three-way fight - and that can only be a good thing.