« Conventional Wisdom | Main | Shock Corridor »
September 3, 2004
Convention Keywords
Cool New York Times graphic counting the keywords used by speakers at this year's Democratic and Republican conventions. Not surprisingly, Republicans were more likely to mention the war, although this number was closer than you'd think, while Dems were much more likely to mention jobs and health care (big surprise there). Perhaps the biggest contrast: Republicans mentioned Kerry nearly eight times more often than Democrats mentioned Bush.
Posted by chuck at September 3, 2004 8:59 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.wordherders.net/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.fpl/2362
Comments
Now that the convention is over, I wonder if they'll do another graphic taking into account all of the Republican speeches. Hope so.
Posted by: George at September 3, 2004 9:07 PM
It would be nice. Even though 20,000 is a reasonable sample, I'd like that kind of visualization for his speech as well. In a sense, it might "water down" some of the keywords a bit. He mentioned Kerry less often than other Republicans did, for example.
Oddly enough, I was mentioned about as often as Osama bin Laden, according to the chart.
Posted by: chuck at September 3, 2004 9:16 PM
Hey Chuck, I'm having an NCAA football picks contest on my site if you want to participate:
http://rusty.yaaarr.org/index.php?p=449
Since this is short notice, there's no penalty for missing the first week. Rules are explained there.
Posted by: Rusty at September 3, 2004 11:26 PM
Not only were you mentioned, Chuck, more than Osama, but Richard Nixon was mentioned more. How's that for a convention recognizing its enemy?
Posted by: Dylan at September 3, 2004 11:53 PM
Yikes! You're right. Of course, come to think of it communism was probably mentioned more often than bin Laden. This could make for an interesting game: Hubert Humpherey was mentioned as often than OBL.
Posted by: chuck at September 4, 2004 12:44 AM