05 November 2008

John McCain vs. Barack Obama (Election Night Speeches)

Last night, US president-elect Obama gave a victory speech in Chicago in front of a 100,000+ joyous crowd in Grant Park; McCain conceded in Phoenix on the back lawn of a luxury hotel with an at times bitter audience of 7,000. I followed the same methodology for their speeches as with the first, second and third presidential debates and the vice presidential debate; you can find some more detail about my methodology there. So let's start with the bubble graph displaying length of words, sentences as well as number of words:



Unsurprisingly, McCain kept it short in every way I measured. Using Wordle, I made all-inclusive word clouds.

John McCain





Barack Obama



McCain mentioned Obama quite a few times, he was after all conceding defeat. As the winner, Obama was looking more ahead, only mentioning his opponent in passing. McCain had many dominant words, esp. campaign, country, thank and variants on America. Obama was more focused with America, tonight, people and new standing out only.

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