TheWashingtonPost.com broke its own traffic record in September, receiving nearly 12 million unique visitors and surpassing USAToday.com to become the second largest newspaper site on the web, according to numbers released by Nielsen today. The New York Times holds the number one spot.

The heated election season and economic turmoil have both played a role in the soaring traffic; political traffic was up 233 percent and business traffic was up 141 percent since last year, Editor and Publisher reported earlier this month. The overall traffic marks a 43 percent increase since last year and a fifteen percent increase over is previous record, set in August, of 11.2 million uniques.

Andy interviewed WashingtonPost.com Executive Editor Jim Brady earlier this year about the Washington Post’s Facebook application. I republished the interview above.

Kelsey Blodget, Associate Producer