* Singular and plural form of nouns was counted as one, e.g. *job* = job + jobs, *tax* = tax + taxes, *woman* = woman + women, etc. * Contractions were expanded for words count purposes, e.g. *I’m* was counted as two words – ‘I’ and ‘am’
As theoretically both candidates had equal time to speak, I chose to show the actual word frequency counts and not the percentage of total words spoken by each candidate (or a rank). The idea is that during the event a specific word is spoken by a candidate and heard by the audience a certain number of times. This, in my opinion, is meaningful no less than the percentage from total words.
Side note, as the transcripts may contain spelling mistakes and/or variations of words, the counts may not be exact and may vary. For example, sometimes in the transcript the word ‘healthcare’ may appear as two words ‘health care’. I believe the margin of error should be more or less similar for both candidates, but I did not manually check every word, nor did I read the whole transcript.
I think Harris did talk about tariffs.
To be fair, Trump never says “Russia” once. It’s always “russia russia russia.” Does that *really* count as 3 times?
Obamacare looks like a notable gap. I wonder how much of that gap is explained by Harris referring to the same policy by its formal name, as the Affordable Care Act or ACA?
Trump sure uses a lot of words for someone who says so little
Anyone else’s Reddit, no matter what they’re subscribed too, filled with fking politics?
Not saying this post is t relevant to the sub, but man I need a break.
Would be nice to see trump’s buzz words on here too, like “great” and “best”.
I don’t see “idea” and “understand” on that list
No “immigrant” count? No “ failed country” count? I feel like that’s all Trump said.
This guy sure talks about Russia a lot
No mention of cats or dogs
I would expect “pets” to be in the top 5 at least…
The huge usage of they and it by Trump indicates he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
He can’t pinpoint who said what and what *it* is.
I don’t know how meaningful this is. Looking strictly at the data it looks like Trump was really concerned about jobs, but you know 90% of the time he said “job” it was “I did the best job” or something equivalent.
The pronouns slide says a lot about them. Besides Trump clearly being the narcissist here, with the more “I”‘s, the amount of “they’ that he uses is just crazy. His ideology is just enforcing the idea that there is a “them” that wants to destroy the US and the American way of living, without actually referring to a real enemy. It’s even more impressive just how little Kamala used that pronoun. Also the amounts of “it” from him just shows how general is everything that he says. For the side that hates pronouns so much, he certainly uses them a lot to express absolutely nothing.
Also, I’m curious in what context did Kamala mention Romania?
Makes it seem like Trump is better at staying on message, which, surprises me.
Someone listened to Clinton and actually counted the I’s. The shift between him saying “he” when Biden was in the race and “she” when Harris is in the race is amazing given that neither Harris or Biden said it very much. I am guessing it’s because he used those pronouns while he was blaming his opponent for something. If anything I bet the amount of I’s and he/she pronouns show how much blame he assigns and how much he talks about himself. When Harris and Biden talk it’s generally about policy or about ideals, when Trump talks it’s personal to blame or take credit.
Honestly, the pronoun usage difference tells a lot imo
where is the count for “Millions”?
“World leaders are laughing at you.”
“Not viktor Orban! He thinks I’m the cat’s meow!”
Good gracious…the man is such an embarrassment
And now we’ll Debate, Debate statistics…
u/AmazingBlueOrange kudos for providing Sources, Tools, and Methodology!
Can this be refined? Yes. Is it perfect? No.
Yet, You knocked out a compelling visual in a relatively short amount of time from event. It tells a story with a couple subtexts even 🤩 and it is engaging.
imo Negativity is not a “hot take.” If you really want to see if improved join in the work or take a pass at telling the story yourself.
You definitely captured one of my core reasons I want/don’t want a person at the helm. In this case specifically One is and always has been very Us v Them and the Other spoke of We And Us.
In the words often incorrectly attributed (probably) to the uniquely flavored founder Ben Franklin: “we must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately,”
Depressingly but predictably, poor/poverty don’t even register.
Great, now lets use ML to compare to normal people and mental patients and see how trump ranks up
How many times did he say millions and billions??
China literally gave Trump millions during his presidency and he still condemns them as though they aren’t making him a killing, knowing he will never not be their puppet.
These statistics are meaningless for Trump because he talks meaningless word salads. When comparing the word count between word salad and a cogent speech, the numbers yield no useful info.
“They” is a pretty big one to me. Such a great example of how divisive each candidate is.
Gotta add Venezuela in the countries and regions, they got name dropped more times than half the countries on the list you’ve got
I can’t be the only person who was disappointed not to see “dog” or “cat”.
I just wanna know how many time Trump said “millions and millions” and “billions and billions”
What about millions and billions of
I wonder how much of Trump’s numbers are inflated by his habit of repeating this and not using stand-in words. I.e. “ObamaCare care was a disaster. ObamaCare is horrible, and I’m going to have a wonderful replacement for ObamaCare.” Etc
The She/Her part is probably skewed because of Trump referring to Kamala so much.
Harris doesn’t use “they” as often as Trump. That’s interesting.
Harris did better overall in the debate but it’s valid criticism to say she didn’t really talk that much about specific topics. She’s playing right to the “not trump” strategy which worked great in this debate since Trump was certainly way off his game.
Really needs to be normalized to the total words spoken. The raw numbers when there’s a 2,000 word difference makes the messaging seem very similar between Trump and Biden/Harris, and flattens the differences between the latter two
Great use of chart and color but I think most of us would have loved to see the words “illegals” and “immigrants” as well.
He used the word “fertilization” way more than any non-OBGYN ever should.
Debate participants should have a given amount of time during a debate. 40 minutes each, and if a candidate uses up their time or chooses to use more time on a subject, that’s all they get. Trump just kept talking over and over, and they kept turning his mic back on.
I’m surprised that Harris actually said fewer words than Biden. I was thinking that find a sort of slow and lethargic. I guess she just took her time into nunciated
I’d like to see these numbers as percentages of their relative total word counts.
“I did all this stuff and THEY are evil”
What was the talk time? I felt Trump had more time.
43 comments
* **Data source:** June 2024 debate – [CNN debate transcript](https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/27/politics/read-biden-trump-debate-rush-transcript/index.html), September 2024 debate – [ABC debate transcript](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/harris-trump-presidential-debate-transcript/story?id=113560542)
* **Data processing:** Python
* **Data visualization:** Excel
Shown are word counts by each candidate:
* Singular and plural form of nouns was counted as one, e.g. *job* = job + jobs, *tax* = tax + taxes, *woman* = woman + women, etc.
* Contractions were expanded for words count purposes, e.g. *I’m* was counted as two words – ‘I’ and ‘am’
As theoretically both candidates had equal time to speak, I chose to show the actual word frequency counts and not the percentage of total words spoken by each candidate (or a rank). The idea is that during the event a specific word is spoken by a candidate and heard by the audience a certain number of times. This, in my opinion, is meaningful no less than the percentage from total words.
Side note, as the transcripts may contain spelling mistakes and/or variations of words, the counts may not be exact and may vary. For example, sometimes in the transcript the word ‘healthcare’ may appear as two words ‘health care’. I believe the margin of error should be more or less similar for both candidates, but I did not manually check every word, nor did I read the whole transcript.
I think Harris did talk about tariffs.
To be fair, Trump never says “Russia” once. It’s always “russia russia russia.” Does that *really* count as 3 times?
Obamacare looks like a notable gap. I wonder how much of that gap is explained by Harris referring to the same policy by its formal name, as the Affordable Care Act or ACA?
Trump sure uses a lot of words for someone who says so little
Anyone else’s Reddit, no matter what they’re subscribed too, filled with fking politics?
Not saying this post is t relevant to the sub, but man I need a break.
Would be nice to see trump’s buzz words on here too, like “great” and “best”.
I don’t see “idea” and “understand” on that list
No “immigrant” count? No “ failed country” count? I feel like that’s all Trump said.
This guy sure talks about Russia a lot
No mention of cats or dogs
I would expect “pets” to be in the top 5 at least…
The huge usage of they and it by Trump indicates he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
He can’t pinpoint who said what and what *it* is.
I don’t know how meaningful this is. Looking strictly at the data it looks like Trump was really concerned about jobs, but you know 90% of the time he said “job” it was “I did the best job” or something equivalent.
The pronouns slide says a lot about them. Besides Trump clearly being the narcissist here, with the more “I”‘s, the amount of “they’ that he uses is just crazy. His ideology is just enforcing the idea that there is a “them” that wants to destroy the US and the American way of living, without actually referring to a real enemy. It’s even more impressive just how little Kamala used that pronoun. Also the amounts of “it” from him just shows how general is everything that he says. For the side that hates pronouns so much, he certainly uses them a lot to express absolutely nothing.
Also, I’m curious in what context did Kamala mention Romania?
Makes it seem like Trump is better at staying on message, which, surprises me.
Someone listened to Clinton and actually counted the I’s. The shift between him saying “he” when Biden was in the race and “she” when Harris is in the race is amazing given that neither Harris or Biden said it very much. I am guessing it’s because he used those pronouns while he was blaming his opponent for something. If anything I bet the amount of I’s and he/she pronouns show how much blame he assigns and how much he talks about himself. When Harris and Biden talk it’s generally about policy or about ideals, when Trump talks it’s personal to blame or take credit.
Honestly, the pronoun usage difference tells a lot imo
where is the count for “Millions”?
“World leaders are laughing at you.”
“Not viktor Orban! He thinks I’m the cat’s meow!”
Good gracious…the man is such an embarrassment
And now we’ll Debate, Debate statistics…
u/AmazingBlueOrange kudos for providing Sources, Tools, and Methodology!
Can this be refined? Yes. Is it perfect? No.
Yet, You knocked out a compelling visual in a relatively short amount of time from event. It tells a story with a couple subtexts even 🤩 and it is engaging.
imo Negativity is not a “hot take.” If you really want to see if improved join in the work or take a pass at telling the story yourself.
You definitely captured one of my core reasons I want/don’t want a person at the helm. In this case specifically One is and always has been very Us v Them and the Other spoke of We And Us.
In the words often incorrectly attributed (probably) to the uniquely flavored founder Ben Franklin: “we must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately,”
Source: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-22-02-0284
Depressingly but predictably, poor/poverty don’t even register.
Great, now lets use ML to compare to normal people and mental patients and see how trump ranks up
How many times did he say millions and billions??
China literally gave Trump millions during his presidency and he still condemns them as though they aren’t making him a killing, knowing he will never not be their puppet.
These statistics are meaningless for Trump because he talks meaningless word salads. When comparing the word count between word salad and a cogent speech, the numbers yield no useful info.
“They” is a pretty big one to me. Such a great example of how divisive each candidate is.
Gotta add Venezuela in the countries and regions, they got name dropped more times than half the countries on the list you’ve got
I can’t be the only person who was disappointed not to see “dog” or “cat”.
I just wanna know how many time Trump said “millions and millions” and “billions and billions”
What about millions and billions of
I wonder how much of Trump’s numbers are inflated by his habit of repeating this and not using stand-in words. I.e. “ObamaCare care was a disaster. ObamaCare is horrible, and I’m going to have a wonderful replacement for ObamaCare.” Etc
The She/Her part is probably skewed because of Trump referring to Kamala so much.
Harris doesn’t use “they” as often as Trump. That’s interesting.
Harris did better overall in the debate but it’s valid criticism to say she didn’t really talk that much about specific topics. She’s playing right to the “not trump” strategy which worked great in this debate since Trump was certainly way off his game.
Really needs to be normalized to the total words spoken. The raw numbers when there’s a 2,000 word difference makes the messaging seem very similar between Trump and Biden/Harris, and flattens the differences between the latter two
Great use of chart and color but I think most of us would have loved to see the words “illegals” and “immigrants” as well.
He used the word “fertilization” way more than any non-OBGYN ever should.
Debate participants should have a given amount of time during a debate. 40 minutes each, and if a candidate uses up their time or chooses to use more time on a subject, that’s all they get. Trump just kept talking over and over, and they kept turning his mic back on.
I’m surprised that Harris actually said fewer words than Biden. I was thinking that find a sort of slow and lethargic. I guess she just took her time into nunciated
I’d like to see these numbers as percentages of their relative total word counts.
“I did all this stuff and THEY are evil”
What was the talk time? I felt Trump had more time.