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:

most used: "the": 333
 

Big Words:
COUNTERTERRORISM
TRANSFORMATIONAL

Kerry:

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!)