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Oldest Recording of Spoken Kouri-Vini.
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Showing posts with label Joe Biden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joe Biden. Show all posts
03 November 2008
NO on Proposition 8 in California
Just a quick note: if you're reading my blog in California, you are very likely to see ads for the California Prop. 8 appear between posts. I want to make it perfectly clear that these ads are placed by Google AdSense and are in no way screened or approved by me. These ads I see are actually lying: it is not true that the Obama-Biden presidential ticket supports Prop. 8 as they are very clearly suggesting. Obama is on the record as opposed to anti-gay Prop. 8. For what's it worth, I am a strong opponent of Prop. 8 myself and urge all my CA readers to vote no on Prop. 8.
02 November 2008
Obama vs. McCain vs. Palin vs. Biden in the Last Month: Details
A post on the FiveThirtyEight.com blog (Google Traffic Suggests McCain Not Grabbing Voters' Attention) today looked up the Google-popularity of McCain and Obama, using Google Trends. The author wondered about the context of the Obama searches: maybe they were people looking for dirt, i.e., "proof" for the many slanderous allegations? Well, there's a way to a least get an idea of that and more: use Google Insights for Search
—my standard analysis tool.
I also included Palin and Biden to complete the presidential election picture. This graph showed again that Obama has been in the lead for the past month. Palin at times peaked higher than Obama and was most of the time more Google-popular than McCain. Except for his vice presidential debate, Biden led a quiet life out of the big spotlight ;-) Now, let's have a look at the details underlying this graph. First, the geographical differences for the candidates; then the context of the candidates' searches.
I started with Obama's regional search patterns:
The following states were the most interested in him: New Mexico, Colorado and North Carolina. The remainder of the top 10 were also seen as battleground states at one time or another, except of course the District of Columbia and Illinois. How was McCain's list?
Ohio, New Mexico and Pennsylvania led the top 10. Further down though, the battleground states didn't dominate with McCain: only three more. Furthermore, his home state Arizona wasn't in the top 10. Interesting... Next: Palin.
Her top three was made up of Alaska, Vermont and Oregon: all non-battleground states. In the remaining seven there was similarly only one state that could be called a battleground (Colorado). This seemed to point at her appeal being more as a celebrity than in the strict context of the campaign. Finally, where was Biden the most searched?
Delaware, Vermont and Alaska led his list. Maybe a lot of people in Alaska were trying to find out what their governor was up against? The only battleground state the Democratic VP candidate was Google-popular: Pennsylvania. he has been campaigning a lot there if I'm not mistaken.
In conclusion, Obama was the one who evoked he highest interest in the battleground states. That being said, in what light was he being searched: positive or negative? Here's the list of most common search terms for Obama:
The top 10 was basically positive with searches focusing on the race, polls and debates. The second list on the right shows the "rising" searches, i.e., searches that saw the fastest growth spurt but were not in the top 10. Nos. 4-8 were rather negative: (false) accusations of him not being qualified in a legal sense to run, the ACORN voter registration fraud allegations, the tenuous connection with a '60s terrorist. All in all, the rising searches displayed a half positive (Powell, ...), half negative interest. Republican mud-slinging had only a limited impact. On to his opponent, McCain:
His top 10 was similar to Obama: positive. The "risers" were also all basically positive. Next, Palin.
Five of her top 10 searches related to Tina Fey's parody of her on Saturday Night Live. I don't think that can be classified unequivocally as positive. The other five were the typical contexts of the campaign, debate, etc. When it came to rising searches, about half of them to had a connection with SNL. Last but not least ;-) , Senator Biden...
A basic, positive top 10 was accompanied by as much as four rising searches about the SNL sketch parodying the VP debate.
Clearly, the searches were mostly about the campaign except for some following up on accusations against Obama and regarding the Palin SNL saga.
—my standard analysis tool.
I also included Palin and Biden to complete the presidential election picture. This graph showed again that Obama has been in the lead for the past month. Palin at times peaked higher than Obama and was most of the time more Google-popular than McCain. Except for his vice presidential debate, Biden led a quiet life out of the big spotlight ;-) Now, let's have a look at the details underlying this graph. First, the geographical differences for the candidates; then the context of the candidates' searches.
I started with Obama's regional search patterns:
The following states were the most interested in him: New Mexico, Colorado and North Carolina. The remainder of the top 10 were also seen as battleground states at one time or another, except of course the District of Columbia and Illinois. How was McCain's list?
Ohio, New Mexico and Pennsylvania led the top 10. Further down though, the battleground states didn't dominate with McCain: only three more. Furthermore, his home state Arizona wasn't in the top 10. Interesting... Next: Palin.
Her top three was made up of Alaska, Vermont and Oregon: all non-battleground states. In the remaining seven there was similarly only one state that could be called a battleground (Colorado). This seemed to point at her appeal being more as a celebrity than in the strict context of the campaign. Finally, where was Biden the most searched?
Delaware, Vermont and Alaska led his list. Maybe a lot of people in Alaska were trying to find out what their governor was up against? The only battleground state the Democratic VP candidate was Google-popular: Pennsylvania. he has been campaigning a lot there if I'm not mistaken.
In conclusion, Obama was the one who evoked he highest interest in the battleground states. That being said, in what light was he being searched: positive or negative? Here's the list of most common search terms for Obama:
The top 10 was basically positive with searches focusing on the race, polls and debates. The second list on the right shows the "rising" searches, i.e., searches that saw the fastest growth spurt but were not in the top 10. Nos. 4-8 were rather negative: (false) accusations of him not being qualified in a legal sense to run, the ACORN voter registration fraud allegations, the tenuous connection with a '60s terrorist. All in all, the rising searches displayed a half positive (Powell, ...), half negative interest. Republican mud-slinging had only a limited impact. On to his opponent, McCain:
His top 10 was similar to Obama: positive. The "risers" were also all basically positive. Next, Palin.
Five of her top 10 searches related to Tina Fey's parody of her on Saturday Night Live. I don't think that can be classified unequivocally as positive. The other five were the typical contexts of the campaign, debate, etc. When it came to rising searches, about half of them to had a connection with SNL. Last but not least ;-) , Senator Biden...
A basic, positive top 10 was accompanied by as much as four rising searches about the SNL sketch parodying the VP debate.
Clearly, the searches were mostly about the campaign except for some following up on accusations against Obama and regarding the Palin SNL saga.
05 October 2008
Wordle
I realize now that I didn't use the superb Wordle online text analysis website properly: my bad! Of course, one should always read the instructions completely and go over the different settings before using any software. The default graph shows only 150 words but this can be changed. Also, one can, for instance, have the words arranged more or less alphabetically: this facilitates finding specific words. Here are the complete settings I'll be using from now on:
The following three posts have now been amended with the improved "word clouds":
- language:
remove nos.
remove common English words
- font:
Teen
prefer alphabetical order
rounder edges
horizontal
a little variance
- layout:
prefer alphabetical order
rounder edges
horizontal
- color:
a little variance
The following three posts have now been amended with the improved "word clouds":
02 October 2008
Sarah Palin vs. Joe Biden vs. Glen Ifill
I'm afraid that part 3 of the Democratic Party vs. Republican Party vs. Green Party vs. Libertarian Party vs. Constitution Party series of posts will have to wait till tomorrow. Tonight I watched the vice presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis and of course I want to present you with my word analysis again (see previous posts on the first presidential debate and the convention speeches). I found the transcript and separated out the words spoken by Palin, Biden and moderator Ifill. Let's start with the bubble graph in which I summarize how many words, sentences and characters (excl. spaces) each speaker used:
Ifill didn't use a lot of words which makes sense as she was the moderator. However, her words were notably longer even though she spoke in short sentences. This seems a bit odd at first. The explanation lies in her word choice as moderator: her most common words were "governor" and "senator" (as we'll see below). Palin and Biden were very similar in style though Palin did use longer sentences. I'm not sure what that could mean.
Next, using Wordle, I again made a "word cloud" of each of the debate contributions.
Sarah Palin
Joe Biden
Glen Ifill
Peculiarly, Palin's most common word was "also." My impression was that at times she sort of went on and on, just listing talking points, which then maybe were loosely connected by the word "also"... Then came "going," maybe due to her more colloquial style? Also frequent was "John" or "McCain," in other words she was praising and invoking him a lot. Biden's most common word was "John" followed by "McCain," highlighting his not addressing Palin as much as McCain as well as his familiarity with his fellow senator. Then came "going." Maybe he was more colloquial in his style than I realized? Or maybe in both cases they were talking about their team's plans and therefore looking at the near future? Biden also used "Barack" and "Obama" many times, it seems to me when he was stressing their team effort. Finally, Ifill's most common word was "governor" (sometimes abbreviated as "gov." in the transcript: this should be added to the full term's number actually). She did use it more than "senator" or "sen." (no. 2), maybe pointing at the fact that she was addressing Palin more than Biden?
Update 11-4-08: For Palin's use of "also," see the post on the Language Log blog. For the transcript I used, see CNN. "Maverick" really only appears 15 times in it: 9 times for Biden and 6 times for Palin—hard to believe, isn't it?
Update 10-5-08: As I explain in this new post, Wordle has a lot more settings than I was aware of. Here are the improved, "corrected" word clouds.
Sarah Palin (improved)
Joe Biden (improved)
Glen Ifill (improved)
Ifill didn't use a lot of words which makes sense as she was the moderator. However, her words were notably longer even though she spoke in short sentences. This seems a bit odd at first. The explanation lies in her word choice as moderator: her most common words were "governor" and "senator" (as we'll see below). Palin and Biden were very similar in style though Palin did use longer sentences. I'm not sure what that could mean.
Next, using Wordle, I again made a "word cloud" of each of the debate contributions.
Sarah Palin
Joe Biden
Glen Ifill
Peculiarly, Palin's most common word was "also." My impression was that at times she sort of went on and on, just listing talking points, which then maybe were loosely connected by the word "also"... Then came "going," maybe due to her more colloquial style? Also frequent was "John" or "McCain," in other words she was praising and invoking him a lot. Biden's most common word was "John" followed by "McCain," highlighting his not addressing Palin as much as McCain as well as his familiarity with his fellow senator. Then came "going." Maybe he was more colloquial in his style than I realized? Or maybe in both cases they were talking about their team's plans and therefore looking at the near future? Biden also used "Barack" and "Obama" many times, it seems to me when he was stressing their team effort. Finally, Ifill's most common word was "governor" (sometimes abbreviated as "gov." in the transcript: this should be added to the full term's number actually). She did use it more than "senator" or "sen." (no. 2), maybe pointing at the fact that she was addressing Palin more than Biden?
Update 11-4-08: For Palin's use of "also," see the post on the Language Log blog. For the transcript I used, see CNN. "Maverick" really only appears 15 times in it: 9 times for Biden and 6 times for Palin—hard to believe, isn't it?
Update 10-5-08: As I explain in this new post, Wordle has a lot more settings than I was aware of. Here are the improved, "corrected" word clouds.
Sarah Palin (improved)
Joe Biden (improved)
Glen Ifill (improved)
05 September 2008
Harvard University vs. United States Naval Academy vs. University of Idaho vs. University of Southern California vs. Syracuse University
As a sequel to our comparison of the two presidential teams and spouses yesterday, I faced off their alma maters. Luckily, both Michelle and Barack Obama attended the same university (Harvard) so that we don't go over Google Trends' limit of five terms. The other academic institutions are: Syracuse University (Biden), United States Naval Academy (John McCain), University of Idaho (Palin) and University of Southern California (Cindy McCain).
Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "university of south... in all years.
"harvard university" 2.88
"united states naval... 0.06
"university of idaho... 0.62
"university of south... 1.00
"syracuse university... 1.46
It's no surprise that Harvard University has the highest Google-popularity, the US Naval Academy on the other hand is lower than I would have expected. Notice that all "civilian" universities see a downward trend.
Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "university of south... in all years.
"harvard university" 2.88
"united states naval... 0.06
"university of idaho... 0.62
"university of south... 1.00
"syracuse university... 1.46
It's no surprise that Harvard University has the highest Google-popularity, the US Naval Academy on the other hand is lower than I would have expected. Notice that all "civilian" universities see a downward trend.
04 September 2008
Michelle Obama vs. Joe Biden vs. Barack Obama vs. Sarah Palin vs. Cindy McCain vs. John McCain
Tonight I changed the format: let's compare the convention speeches of the 2 main-party presidential tickets and the spouses. I took the transcripts from the official convention websites. I looked how many words they used. Also, how many sentences and characters (excl. spaces) did the speeches have? I summarized these three measures in a bubble graph:
Another way of comparing these "bunches" of words is by means of word clouds whereby the larger a word, the more frequently it occurs in the speech (using Wordle). They're all the rage, aren't they?
Copyright Newshour with Jim Lehrer (PBS) (CC Attribution Noncommercial license).
Copyright rklau (CC Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike license).
Copyright Newshour with Jim Lehrer (PBS) (CC Attribution Noncommercial license).
Copyright Newshour with Jim Lehrer (PBS) (CC Attribution Noncommercial license).
Copyright Newshour with Jim Lehrer (PBS) (CC Attribution Noncommercial license).
Copyright Newshour with Jim Lehrer (PBS) (CC Attribution Noncommercial license).
I'll let you draw your own conclusions this time.
Update 10-5-08: As I explain in this new post, Wordle has a lot more settings than I was aware of. Here are the improved, "corrected" word clouds.
Michelle Obama (improved)
Joe Biden (improved)
Barack Obama (improved)
Sarah Palin (improved)
Cindy McCain (improved)
John McCain (improved)
Another way of comparing these "bunches" of words is by means of word clouds whereby the larger a word, the more frequently it occurs in the speech (using Wordle). They're all the rage, aren't they?
Copyright Newshour with Jim Lehrer (PBS) (CC Attribution Noncommercial license).
Copyright rklau (CC Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike license).
Copyright Newshour with Jim Lehrer (PBS) (CC Attribution Noncommercial license).
Copyright Newshour with Jim Lehrer (PBS) (CC Attribution Noncommercial license).
Copyright Newshour with Jim Lehrer (PBS) (CC Attribution Noncommercial license).
Copyright Newshour with Jim Lehrer (PBS) (CC Attribution Noncommercial license).
I'll let you draw your own conclusions this time.
Update 10-5-08: As I explain in this new post, Wordle has a lot more settings than I was aware of. Here are the improved, "corrected" word clouds.
Michelle Obama (improved)
Joe Biden (improved)
Barack Obama (improved)
Sarah Palin (improved)
Cindy McCain (improved)
John McCain (improved)
21 August 2008
Joe Biden vs. Wesley Clark vs. Evan Bayh vs. Kathleen Sebelius vs. Tim Kaine
With the announcement of a Democratic vice presidential candidate imminent, I looked at the Google Trends popularity of the most-commonly named possibles.
Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "wesley clark" in all years.
"joe biden" 0.60
"wesley clark" 1.00
"evan bayh" 0.20
"kathleen sebelius" 0
"tim kaine" 0.20
I did not include Hillary Clinton for obvious reasons: she is only named as a not-very-possible surprise choice and her heated primary battle with Barack Obama would totally throw of the comparison. The bottom "No data available" part of the graph just means that Google Trends can't track word compounds in its news sources.
This traditional graph doesn't really say much because Wesley Clark's popularity from when he was running in the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries distorts the overall picture. Maybe it makes more sense to gauge the candidates during the last 12 months:
Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "wesley clark" in the last 12 months.
"joe biden" 2.60
"wesley clark" 1.00
"evan bayh" 0.90
"kathleen sebelius" 0.80
"tim kaine" 0.70
Joe Biden is overall in the lead though most candidates have had their moment in the sun: Biden in late 2007-early 2008, Sebelius in about February 2008 and the 3 remaining ones in the last month or two. I could be wrong but those peaks probably are linked with heightened speculation about them being picked for the VP slot at those times, at least for the 4 lower-tier candidates. Biden of course ran in the early primaries. But maybe we are still looking at too long a period? How about the last 30 days:
Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "wesley clark" in the last 30 days.
"joe biden"< 7.00
"wesley clark" 1.00
"evan bayh" 8.50
"kathleen sebelius" 2.50
"tim kaine" 8.50
What has changed? Clark now becomes negligible while Biden has surged the most in recent speculation-induced popularity. Kaine and Bayh both have enjoyed intense speculation at different times but have ended about even with Sebelius. So does this mean Obama will pick Biden? Not necessarily of course... we'll know soon enough.
Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "wesley clark" in all years.
"joe biden" 0.60
"wesley clark" 1.00
"evan bayh" 0.20
"kathleen sebelius" 0
"tim kaine" 0.20
I did not include Hillary Clinton for obvious reasons: she is only named as a not-very-possible surprise choice and her heated primary battle with Barack Obama would totally throw of the comparison. The bottom "No data available" part of the graph just means that Google Trends can't track word compounds in its news sources.
This traditional graph doesn't really say much because Wesley Clark's popularity from when he was running in the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries distorts the overall picture. Maybe it makes more sense to gauge the candidates during the last 12 months:
Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "wesley clark" in the last 12 months.
"joe biden" 2.60
"wesley clark" 1.00
"evan bayh" 0.90
"kathleen sebelius" 0.80
"tim kaine" 0.70
Joe Biden is overall in the lead though most candidates have had their moment in the sun: Biden in late 2007-early 2008, Sebelius in about February 2008 and the 3 remaining ones in the last month or two. I could be wrong but those peaks probably are linked with heightened speculation about them being picked for the VP slot at those times, at least for the 4 lower-tier candidates. Biden of course ran in the early primaries. But maybe we are still looking at too long a period? How about the last 30 days:
Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "wesley clark" in the last 30 days.
"joe biden"< 7.00
"wesley clark" 1.00
"evan bayh" 8.50
"kathleen sebelius" 2.50
"tim kaine" 8.50
What has changed? Clark now becomes negligible while Biden has surged the most in recent speculation-induced popularity. Kaine and Bayh both have enjoyed intense speculation at different times but have ended about even with Sebelius. So does this mean Obama will pick Biden? Not necessarily of course... we'll know soon enough.
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