OK, I have taken a long look at the words that each candidate used in last
night's debate. Now, this study is anything BUT scientific, it probably has some
margin of error (1-100%) and I doubt any valid conclusions can be drawn based on
this (but I will draw some anyway).
I took the transcript from the debates and ran them through some very
sophisticated computer programs (well, slightly more sophisticated than say a
pen and paper) to determine the word frequency distribution from the candidates'
speeches. Here's what I came up with:
Total Words Spoken:
Kerry: 7171 words spoken
Bush: 6399 words spoken
Conclusion: Kerry talks more,
used his talking time more efficiently
Notable Words:
Bush:
I: 180
Iraq, Iraqi, Iraqis: 52
war: 24
hard: 20
Saddam: 16
America: 15
terrror:13
weapons: 11
intelligence: 10 |
Afghanistan:9
American: 9
freedom: 9
Korea: 9
Iraqi: 8
Jong: 7
terrorist(s): 7
Al Qaida: 6
destruction (as in WMDs): 6 |
Safer: 5
security: 5
nuclear: 4
September: 4
honor: 4
hardest: 3
Russia: 3
prayed, prayers: 2
God: 1
|
most used: "the": 333
Big Words:
COUNTERTERRORISM
TRANSFORMATIONAL
Kerry:
|
I: 196
war: 37
Iraq, Iraqi, Iraqis: 36
America: 29
weapon(s): 20
Korea: 15
American: 14
terrorist(s): 9
security: 6 |
Russia: 6
Afghanistan: 5
Americans: 3
intelligence: 3
Al Qaida: 2
Safer: 2
Koreans: 1
Jong: 1
September: 1 |
honors: 1
God: 1
pray: 0
terror: 0
hard: 0
hardest: 0 |
most used: "the": 466
Big Words:
ACKNOWLEDGING
STRENGTHENING
REPROGRAMMING
Conclusions:
-
Kerry is more "American" (46
references to Bush's 24)
-
Bush prays more (2 references to
Kerry's 0)
-
Bush likes to stress "terror" (13
references to Kerry's 0)
-
Bush is "Safer" (5 references to
Kerry's 2)
-
Bush is more concerned about Iraq
(52 references to Kerry's 36)
-
Bush "uses" 9/11 more (4 mentions
to Kerry's 1)
-
Kerry is more concerned with
weapons (20 mentions to Bush's 11)
-
Bush finds things hard (23 mentions
of hard, hardest to Kerry's 0)
-
They both like talking about
themselves
Draw your own conclusions......
Update:
Here's an online tool for analyzing the Debate words (thanks spinfire!)