Now that the Democratic and Republican National Conventions are over, I grabbed all of the (available) speech texts from the DNC and RNC Web sites and threw them into wordle.net just for fun (yep, I’m sadistic that way sometimes). It is hard to compare word occurrences because the Republicans don’t have nearly as many speeches available (52) as the Democrats (168). The Reps lost a day to Gustav, but they also seem to only have the major speeches available online, whereas the Dems have everything available.
Some interesting findings in the data (hover for definitions):
The Obama-to-McCain ratio (DNC): 2.9:1
The McCain-to-Obama ratio (RNC): 8:1
The Obama-to-Bush ratio (DNC): 4.9:1
The McCain-to-Bush ratio (RNC): 88:1 Bush was only mentioned 4 times in speeches available at the RNC.
The Obama-to-Biden ratio (DNC): 9.9:1
The McCain-to-Palin ratio (RNC): 8:1
Here are the word clouds:
All DNC 2008 speeches word cloud
All RNC 2008 speeches word cloud
Here’s the top 15 words:
| DNC Top 15 | RNC Top 15 | |
| 1 | barack | john |
| 2 | obama | mccain |
| 3 | america | country |
| 4 | change | america |
| 5 | need | people |
| 6 | years | american |
| 7 | american | know |
| 8 | people | can |
| 9 | can | need |
| 10 | country | world |
| 11 | president | president |
| 12 | mccain | americans |
| 13 | john | government |
| 14 | new | want |
| 15 | work | like |
Here are links to the word clouds at wordle.net:
And if you haven’t had enough, I’ve linked both the DNC speech word counts and RNC speech word counts as text (csv) files. Enjoy!
Content (RSS)
Very interesting. The first two numbers in your grid suggest to me that the Democrats are far more concerned about Mr. McCain than the Republicans are about Mr. Obama. If I were a political strategist (which, thankfully, I am not), I would be sitting down with Mr. Obama’s people in an attempt to get them to talk more about their own man.
What I would be interested to know, although I think it would be fiendishly hard to ascertain, would be how many times the Dems mentioned Mr. McCain and Mr. Bush in the same sentence.
Thanks for commenting, Rich. Though I caution against reading too much into the data here, I must admin that I expected more balance with those two stats. It is unfortunate that the Rs didn’t post all of the speeches (The First Lady’s speech is not posted, for instance), which would have helped even things out. Using ratios seems to be a relatively safe way to compare things. Excellent suggestion, if I can find a way to do that without pouring through those speeches again, I’ll post a follow-up.
Now that you mention it… I do not remember the GOP speakers using Barak’s name. They were careful to say “my opponent” or something that indicated “the other guy” without promoting his name. I think the Dems could learn from this one.
Rich…someone mentioned an interesting correlation during the last elections. They noted that the closer we got to the general elections the lower the gas prices became (i.e., let’s keep those voters happy). I’m wondering if there is a source of data you could use to look at the gas prices in blue and red states in 2004 and now in 2008 to see if there are correlations to the elections and dominant GOP and Dem states (plus the swing states). I know AAA and gasbuddy.com have gas prices by zipcode and they might have some historical data. If you detect a correlation, it would be interesting to see some type of graphical representation of the change in prices as the election neared in 2004 and now in 2008 by state.
Hi Jamie, thanks for the great suggestion. I’m already working on some gas-related data for my next post, so this will be a good fit.
Jamie – you make an excellent point re: the use of “My Opponent” instead of “Barack Obama” (or, for that matter, “John McCain”). I”d also be interested to see the gas price thing, although I think that in the case of 2004 and 2006, correlation doesn’t necessarily indicate causation. IIRC, historically, gas prices tend to be higher in the summer and the pressure starts to ease a bit after the Labor Day holiday when demand sags. I’d like to know what happened in off-election falls.
Sounds like we’ve given frets a homework assignment!
[...] Jamie and Rich v’s comments on another post got me looking at gas price trends before Presidential elections. I’ve heard comments that gas prices go down prior to an election, and even suspected there may be some manipulation at work. [...]