Tuesday, October 27, 2015

The Presidential Debates, unplugged



The Presidential Debates
Analysis by Quantified Perception
Have you watched the presidential debates so far? You may wonder how the democrats differ from the republicans, in terms of the language used and the concepts highlighted. Quantified Perception has analyzed the transcripts of all three debates to find the crucial areas where the two parties differ, and where they coincide. To our surprise, they really don’t differ much. The words, concepts, and phrases are so close to the same that the only meaningful conclusion is that everyone is talking the same talk.
We used the transcripts from the debates to evaluate the respective language, adjusting each for the number of words reported for each debate.
Of course the language of the campaign dominates, with the words “president” (or “commander in chief”) and “campaign” dominating the remarks. But other (slightly) less obvious words and concepts dominate the language of the candidates for both parties. In fact, the most common words in all three debates are the same, and rank the same:
“people”, “country”, “issues,” “things” and “going”.

The table below shows that the top ten words used in the second republican debate include five of the top ten words from the other two.
Word
Rank in second Republican Debate
Rank in first Republican Debate
Rank in Democratic Debate
people
1
3
1
about
2
2
2
but
3
5
3
do
4
1
4
will
5


they
6


he
7


think
8

9
I’m
9


would
10


if
11
7

want
12

10






 










The most common concepts show a similar pattern. They tend to be the same concepts in each debate, and in roughly the same order:
Business - battle - family - security

The most common concept in all three debates is "business," including the words economy, finance, industry, and wealth. Interestingly, the democrats said “wealth” often, while republicans said “deal”.

“War” is the next common concept, dominated by the word “war” and including “combat,” “fight,” and “battle.”

“Family” was the third most referenced concept, with “children,” “babies,” and “daughters” said frequently. “Daughters” was used much more often than “sons,” indicating some sort of gender bias in both camps.

“Security” was fourth most used concept, including the words “care” and “safety.”

Truth was another concept, indicated by “fact”, “actually,” “truth,” “reality,” and “real.”
“Way” is another frequent word, but that is partially due to Trumps penchant for asides, as in “by the way,” and the dominance he had in speaking in both republican debates.

The phrasing in all three debates was also surprisingly consistent, with the top 15 or so phrases used often in all three. The tables below show that the top 15 phrases from the democratic debate match five of the top phrases from the first republican debate and ten from the second.
Phrases
Rank in Democratic Debate
Rank in first Republican Debate
Rank in second Republican Debate
we have
1


thank you
2


that we
3
4
3
we need
4
1
1
this country
5
5
5
we’re going
6


it was
7

11
we are
8

19
you have
9

5
wall street
10


climate change
11


you know
12
2
2
united states
13

4
if you
14
9
17
but I
15

12


Quantified Perception used its Text Analysis Profiler for this analysis. Among other things, the Profiler determines a “Myers-Briggs”–like profile for a document. All three transcripts profiled as “ENTP”, with remarkable similar ratios of the profile vectors:
1st Republican Debate   2nd Republican Debate       Democratic Debate


The Wall Street Journal years ago referred to “Remocrats” and “Depublicans.” I wonder if they will revive that language, if this continues…

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