Last week, I did a simple word-frequency analysis of the first presidential debate, looking for the words whose frequencies were most different between the two candidates. This morning, I fetched the transcript of the last night's (second) debate from the official site, and ran it through the same programs as before.
Without further ado, here's the top of the list:
| Word | Bush count | Kerry count | Word | Bush count | Kerry count | |
| decisions | 9 |
0 |
ladies | 0 |
14 |
|
| remember | 9 |
0 |
gentlemen | 0 |
13 |
|
| yet | 8 |
0 |
left | 0 |
11 |
|
| Europe | 7 |
0 |
behind | 0 |
11 |
|
| spending | 7 |
0 |
kids | 0 |
10 |
|
| continue | 6 |
0 |
John | 0 |
8 |
|
| pick | 6 |
0 |
respect | 0 |
9 |
|
| talks | 6 |
0 |
allies | 0 |
7 |
|
| unpopular | 6 |
0 |
away | 0 |
7 |
|
| we'll | 12 |
1 |
chairman | 0 |
7 |
|
| al qaida | 5 |
0 |
even | 0 |
7 |
|
| freedom | 5 |
0 |
lost | 0 |
7 |
|
| long | 5 |
0 |
part | 0 |
7 |
|
| medical | 5 |
0 |
anything | 0 |
6 |
|
| must | 5 |
0 |
children | 0 |
6 |
|
| record | 5 |
0 |
companies | 0 |
6 |
|
| spend | 5 |
0 |
competitive | 0 |
6 |
|
| businesses | 10 |
1 |
peace | 0 |
6 |
|
| coal | 4 |
0 |
training | 0 |
6 |
(Again, let me say that my overall evaluation of the debate was consistent with what seems to be the conventional wisdom: Bush did much better than before, and Kerry was OK too. Score it a draw.)
One fact that's obvious in this table is that Bush was much less verbally repetitive this time -- in the second debate, Kerry repeated more words and phrases more often than Bush did.
Some of the candidates' themes are also clear in these simple-minded word counts. For example, in the first debate Kerry used spend or spending 3 times, Bush twice; but in the second debate, Bush used spend or spending 12 times, to none for Kerry. On the other hand, in the second debate, Kerry used kid, kids, child, children, young 27 times, to 3 for Bush.
The total word counts show a fairly consistent pattern:
| Debate1 | Debate2 | |
| Bush | 6,135 | 6,893 |
| Kerry | 7,136 | 7,717 |
Kerry used 12% more words than Bush this time, as opposed to 16% more in the first debate.
Both men used more words in the second debate than they did in the first one (Bush 12%, Kerry 8%). This might have been because they spoke faster (perhaps due to the more informal atmosphere), but I'm not certain that the number of questions and one-minute-extensions was exactly the same in the two debates.
Posted by Mark Liberman at October 9, 2004 09:28 AM