Obama spoke for longer (42:50 min = 2,570 seconds) than Romney (38:32 min = 2,312 seconds) (debate timing by CNN). Romney used +7.0% (7,791 vs 7,280) more words than Obama — he spoke faster with a rate of 3.37 words/second, +19.1% (3.37 vs 2.83) faster than Obama's 2.83 words/second. Despite the fact that Obama delivered -6.6% (7,280 vs 7,791) fewer words, he used +3.4% (1,255 vs 1,214) more unique words. Romney either comes across as rushed, repetitive and aggressive or Obama as slow, strained and laborious.

In the first debate of 2008, Obama delivered +6.9% (7,529 vs 7,043) more words than McCain. This year, we find Obama speaking -3.4% (7,270 vs 7,529) fewer words than in 2008, while the Republican candidate speaking +10.6% (7,791 vs 7,043) more. In the 2008 debate, the number of unique words was nearly identical for both candidates (1,376 for Obama and 1,380 for McCain). This time we see Obama use +3.4% (1,255 vs 1,214) more unique words than Romney. Obama appears more articulate and measured, having more unique words and slower speech.

Obama's unique word fraction increased from 2008, from 16.5% to 17.2%. The Republican candidate's fraction dropped, from McCain's 17.6% to Romney's 15.6%. The Democrats have become more articulate, the Republicans less.

Of all the words used in the debate, 13,205 were spoken by both candidates. Of Obama's 7,280 words, 934 (12.8%) were exclusive to him (i.e. spoken by Obama, but not Romney), higher than Romney's 12.0%. Within these exlusive words, Obama had a higher fraction of unique ones (65.4% vs 61.2%). Obama tended to repeat exclusive words less than Romney.

Table 1

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a c b d

a :: word count b :: word count, as fraction in total in debate c :: unique words in (a) d :: unique words in (a), as fraction in (a) bar :: proportion of (a-c):c

Obama's relative stop word count is slightly higher than Romney's. 56.2% of Obama's words are stop, compared to 55.6% of Romney's. When we look at unique non-stop words, Obama's fraction is significantly higher, 34.8% vs 30.9%, indicating that his speech is more varied.

When exclusive non-stop words are examined, we see there were more unique words that were exclusive than shared. Obama had +6.8% (597 vs 559) more unique exclusive words. The two candidates shared 511 unique words.

Stop word frequency counts do not reveal significant difference between the two candidates, although much can be gleaned from which stop words were actually used. For example, pronoun profiles speak volumes.

Table 2

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a c b d

a :: total number of words, for a given category (all, stop, non-stop) b :: (a) relative to words in the debate if category=all, otherwise relative to words by the candidate c :: number of unique words with set (a) d :: (c) relative to (a) bar :: proportion of (a-c):c

We've already seen that Obama delivered proportionately more unique words (17.2%) than Romney (15.6%). This is reflected in his -9.4% (5.8 vs 6.4) (all words) and -9.4% (2.9 vs 3.2) (non-stop words) lower average word frequency. Obama also repeated stop words less often, -7.3% (27.9 vs 30.1). Finally, if we look at exclusive words, these are repeated -6.2% (1.52 vs 1.62) less by Obama as well.

The top 5 non-stop words (and frequencies) spoken by Obama were know (28), now (37), make (44), romney (44) and governor (48). Romney used plan (35), one (37), tax (39), president (41) and people (73).

Looking only at exclusive words, the top 5 non-stop words for Obama were investments (7), difference (8), loopholes (9), folks (11) and opportunity (11) and for Romney, retirees (6), current (7), half (7), mr (7) and middle-income (8).

For those words used by both candidates, the top 5 were plan (54), now (56), tax (60), make (63) and people (100). Three of these appear in Romney's top 5 list (plan, tax and people) but only one in Obama's (now).

Table 3

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a b c

a :: average word frequency b :: largest word frequency in 50% of content c :: largest word frequency in 90% of content bar :: proportion of a:b:c

The number and size of sentences suggests that Obama's delivery is gramatically more complex than Romney. Obama delivered -32.5% (391 vs 579) fewer sentences than Romney but only -6.6% (7,280 vs 7,791) fewer words. He packed more into his sentences.

Obama's sentences were +37.8% (18.6 vs 13.5) longer when all words are considered and +40.0% (8.4 vs 6) longer when only non-stop words are counted. This is quite a large difference, especially given that Obama spoke for longer and his unique word usage is higher than Romney.

Both candidates delivered some whopping sentences. Obama's largest sentence is quite oratorial, with 112 words (536 characters).

Obama, 112 words — And everything that I've tried to do and everything that I'm now proposing for the next four years in terms of improving our education system, or developing American energy, or making sure that we're closing loopholes for companies that are shipping jobs overseas and focusing on small businesses and companies that are creating jobs here in the United States, or - or closing our deficit in a responsible, balanced way that allows us to invest in our future - all those things are designed to make sure that the American people, their genius, their grit, their determination is - is channeled, and - and - and they have an opportunity to succeed.

Romney's longest sentence is stammering gibberish of 71 words and 318 characters.

Romney, 71 words — Look, the right course for - for America's government - we were talking about the role of government - is not to become the economic player picking winners and losers, telling people what kind of health treatment they can receive, taking over the health care system that - that has existed in this country for - for a long, long time and has produced the best health records in the world.

Table 4

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a b c

a :: average sentence size b :: largest sentence size for 50% of content c :: largest sentence size for 90% of content bar :: proportion of a:b:c

The relative total of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in Obama's and Romney's delivery was roughly the same, with Obama using slightly more Δ_rel=+1.5% (Δ_abs=+0.6%, 40.5% vs 39.9%). Within this set of words, Obama had a +3.5% (1,061 vs 1,025) more unique words.

Romney used Δ_rel=+3.5% (Δ_abs=+1.7%, 50.8% vs 49.1%) more nouns and Δ_rel=+6.4% (Δ_abs=+1.1%, 18.4% vs 17.3%) more adjectives, but Obama used Δ_rel=+8.8% (Δ_abs=+2.3%, 28.4% vs 26.1%) more verbs and Δ_rel=+10.6% (Δ_abs=+0.5%, 5.2% vs 4.7%) more adverbs.

Across all parts of speech, Obama's use of unique words is 3-8% richer than Romney's. Relative to Romney, Obama's use of unique nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs was Δ_rel=+7.8% (Δ_abs=+2.7%, 37.5% vs 34.8%), Δ_rel=+4.7% (Δ_abs=+1.9%, 42.5% vs 40.6%), Δ_rel=+3.4% (Δ_abs=+1.6%, 49.3% vs 47.7%), and Δ_rel=+7.8% (Δ_abs=+2.9%, 40.3% vs 37.4%).

Table 5

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a c b d

a :: total number of words for a given POS (all, noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun) b :: (a) relative to all words by candidate c :: unique words in (a) d :: (c) relative to (a) bar :: proportion of (a-c):c

Obama is consistently less repetitive with his words than Romney. For nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs his average word frequency is -7.0% (2.67 vs 2.87), -4.5% (2.35 vs 2.46), -3.3% (2.03 vs 2.1), and -7.1% (2.48 vs 2.67), less, respectively. He particularly repeats nouns and adverbs less than Romney.

For verbs the 90% cumulative distribution value is higher than Obama, indicating that his frequency distribution is skewed and that his most repeated verbs were repeated more often. Obama's top 3 verbs were know (24), think (26) and make (39). Romney's were make (18), want (26) and will (31).

Romney hammers away at his nouns. His top 4 by frequency were medicare (31), tax (37), president (39) and people (64). Obama's were people (21), tax (21), romney (44) and governor (48). It is interesting to see that Romney refers to people 64 times but to Obama 39 times. Obama mentions people 21 times, prefering the use of folks, which he mentions 10 times.

Table 5

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a b c

a :: average word frequency b :: largest word frequency in 50% of content c :: largest word frequency in 90% of content bar :: proportion of a:b:c

Because Obama's sentences were +40.0% (8.4 vs 6) longer than Romney's, he had consistenly more total and unique pairings.

Obama had nearly twice as many, +82.3% (1,318 vs 723), unique verb-verb pairings as Romney. Where the candidates were most similar was in the number of unique noun-noun and adjective-adjective pairings. It is interesting to see the contrast between noun-noun and verb-verb statistics — Obama's sentences had relatively more verbs in them, suggesting that he spoke in terms of compound actions.

Table 6 a,b

legend

a c   d

a :: total number of pairs, for a given category (e.g. verb/noun) c :: number of unique pairs within set (a) d :: (c) relative to (a) bar :: proportion of (a-c):c

Table 6c

legend

a c   d

a :: unique pairs for Barack Obama c :: unique pairs for Mitt Romney d :: (c) relative to (a) (i.e. Mitt Romney relative to Barack Obama) bars :: (a) and (c)

This table shows the number of words that were spoken exclusively by either candidate, and those that were shared. In total, 1,600 unique nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs were used between the two candidates. The shared fraction (486, 30.4%) was smallest, with Obama having the larger number of exclusive words (575, 35.9%) than Romney (539, 33.7%).

Of all unique nouns (845), Obama and Romney had more exclusive to them (266, 31.5%) and (276, 32.7) than they shared (248, 29.3%). Within this set of nouns, Romney had a slightly richer set with 276 unique nouns, compared to Obama's 266.

An even greater difference is found in the set of unique verbs (555), of which only 131 (23.6%) were shared. The largest fraction was used exclusively by Obama (203, 36.6%) with 168 (30.3%) by Romney. Obama's high fraction of exclusive verbs suggests his emphasis on various forms of action.

Like for nouns, Romney had the largest fraction of adjectives (29.9%).

Adverbs were the only part of speech that were more extensively shared (31, 36.0%), indicating a lower variety in this part of speech within the debate. Obama had a greater exlusive fraction (32.6%) than Romney (25.6%).

Table 7c

legend

a d b e c f

a :: total number of words in set (e.g. obama \ romney, obama ∩ romney, obama ∪ romney , for a given part of speech b :: (a) relative to all exclusive words in n+v+adj+adv c :: (a) relative to all words in n+v+adj+adv d :: unique words in (a) e :: (d) relative to (a) f :: (d) relative to all unique words in n+v+adj+adv bar1 :: normalized ratio of (a-d):d bar2 :: absolute ratio of (a-d):d for all POS groups (first column) or POS group (other columns)

Obama has -3.6% (529 vs 549) fewer noun phrases than Romney. But, given that he delivered fewer words and a higher fraction of unique words, it is not surprising that he had a higher fraction of unique phrases by Δ_rel=+4.6% (Δ_abs=+2.0%, 45.4% vs 43.39%).

Obama was less repetitive, which can be seen in the number of phrases per noun. He delivered +5.7% (0.37 vs 0.35) more noun phrases per noun than Romney.

Obama's phrases were only slightly longer by +0.9% (2.31 vs 2.29), for all phrases, and by +0.4% (2.36 vs 2.35), for top-level phrases.

Table 8a

legend

a d b e c f

a :: number of noun phrases b :: (a) relative to number of all noun phrases c :: number of noun phrases per noun d :: number of unique phrases e :: (c) relative to (a) f :: number of unique noun phrases per unique noun bar :: normalized ratio of (a-c):c

Table 8b

legend

a b c

a :: average noun phrase size, in words b :: largest noun phrase size in 50% of content c :: largest noun phrase size in 90% of content bar :: proportion of a:b:c

The majority of phrases are not shared by the speakers. Only 16.0% of all phrases are shared, with Obama and Romney delivering roughly the same number of exclusive phrases (448 vs 458). The number of total and unique top-level phrases is almost identical for the two speakers.

Exclusive phrases tended to be longer for the candidates (2.34, 2.35) than shared (2.08).

Table 9a

legend

a c b d

a :: number of noun phrases b :: (a) relative to number of all noun phrases c :: number of unique phrases d :: (c) relative to (a) bar :: normalized ratio of (a-c):c

Table 9b

legend

a b c

a :: average noun phrase size, in words b :: largest noun phrase size in 50% of content c :: largest noun phrase size in 90% of content bar :: proportion of a:b:c

Obama had -31.7% lower Windbag Index. This is a reflection of the fact that his speech is less repetitive across 7 of the 8 metrics. The only factor that was lower for Obama was the fraction of words that were non-stop (0.438 vs 0.444).

Note that the 2012 Windbag Index cannot be compared directly to the 2008 version because of different methodology in computing noun phrases.

Romney's cloud appears more bloated that Obama's. This is due to his higher repetition — recall that Romney had a non-stop average word frequency +10.3% (3.2 vs 2.9) higher than Obama.

Romney's most commonly used verb was "want", suggesting a sense of desire and entitlement on the part of his constituents and "will", suggesting that he'll give it to them. From his top words you can construct the sentence "people just want lower tax".

Obama mentioned Romney quite a bit (Romney did not return the favour) and had a predilection for "make", "think", "know", as well as "want".

Romney engages in some fearmongering, with words like "lose", "kill", "debt" and "always". Remember, these are words unique to Romney, not used by Obama. Obama's major exclusive words were "difference", "folks", "opportunity" and "loopholes".

Notice Romney's approach to describing the middle-class — he uses "middle-income", whereas Obama uses "average" and "folks".

Obama's contribution of "folks" and "opportunity" dominates here. This means that within the set of words unique to Obama, he repeated them more than the corresponding top-use words of Romney, which were "half" (refering to the deficit) and "retirees".

The rest of the cloud, however, is filled more with Romney's words than Obamas, suggesting repetition now on Romney's part. Romney is paranoid about "food", "stamps" and "debt", which are all words unmentioned by Obama.

Some interesting nouns for Obama are "choices", "math", "law", and "war". Romney has "principle", "Spain", "China", "burden" and "mortgage".

The top verbs unique to Romney were "lose" and "hurt", followed by words like "concerned", "taxed" and "kill". For Obama, the top unique verb was the general "went", and also "buy", "created" and "called".

If the verbs are an indication of action planned for and supported by the candidates, then Romney is someone who wishes to "stop" and "simplify" and worries about being "kill"(ed) and "crushed". Obama is ever more hopeful and positive with "initiate", "invest", "created", and "reflect".

Obama and Romney reserve unique adjectives to refer to the middle class. Romney uses their income, "middle-income", whereas Obama uses the more neutral "average". Romney did not use "fair", mentioned by Obama 4 times.

Obama contributes more large words to this cloud, indicating greater relative repetition in adjectives exclusive to him.

Adverbs yield the smallest word cloud because they are the least frequent of the four parts of speech I examined. Obama seems to want to energize the audience with "aggressively", "vitally" and "essentially". Romney is categorical with "always" and "rather". These words suggest that Romney is guided by immutable rules that apply "always" and "correctly" (to him, also "obviously").

Note Romney's use of technical words like "mathematically", against Obama's "structurally", and "extraordinarily". I'd vote for Obama merely for his exclusive use of "ironically".

When all parts of speech are combined into cloud, Romney's unique words swamp out those of Obama, suggesting that Romney repeated terms exclusive to him more frequently.

Obama wants to remind "folks" of "opportunity", sticking to his message of hope. Romney, on the other hand, is reminding the audience that he hasn't forgotten the "middle-income" segment.

The major contributors to Obama's word pair tag clouds are "right now", "small businesses", "middle-class families", and "well think". Romney knows what is "always best" and focuses on "efficient private" and "free ever", with heavy reference to finances.

Obama's noun/noun combination tag is uniform in size, suggesting that he did not put undue emphasis on any one specific concept. He mentions "health care", "tax cuts", and "health insurance". Romney has some very large word in the noun/noun cloud, indicating heavy repetition of "health care" and "income tax".