Drudge is pushing a study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, also being published by PBS:

The Drudge Report outranks social media when it comes to driving news traffic to top Web sites, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. In a comprehensive examination of online traffic data provided by Nielsen, Pew found that only “three sites ever account for more than 10 percent of the traffic to any [major news Web site]: Google (search and news combined), the Drudge Report and Yahoo (search and news combined).”

There is no arguing that Drudge has a very big influence on driving traffic, but that isn’t the purpose of Twitter and Facebook. Drudge’s content is 99.9% linking, while the number of external links on social sites generally make up a very small percentage. Comparing the two is really a falsity.