Democratic Party vs. Republican Party vs. Green Party vs. Libertarian Party vs. Constitution Party (Part 1)

A grand face-off of the five major political parties of the US! Since 2004, their Google-popularity has evolved as follows:



Generally speaking, the Democratic Party (DP) narrowly bested the Republican Party (RP) though at pivotal moments the latter succeeded in rising above the former, e.g., the 2004 presidential elections (peak in October) and at the very end as we are again approaching presidential elections. Note the surge at the occasion of the 2006 elections for Congress. The Green Party was the leader among the so-called "third parties." When we look at the electoral results, these trend lines do seem to run in parallel: George Bush narrowly won re-election in 2004 and the DP became the majority party in Congress in 2006. I wonder whether the recent uptick in interest in the RP will turn out to be as consequential come election day (November 4). Of course, 2004 showed us that October is the pivotal month...

How about we perform an experiment and look at the interest in political parties in the states that right now are judged to be competitive, a.k.a. "toss-ups," starting in January? Then, we could compare the graphs with Pollster.com's presidential polls' state regression-trend-line graphs. On Pollster.com, I used the more sensitive smoothing setting and besides Obama and McCain added the third-party candidates when poll data were available: Ralph Nader (ex-Green Party, now independent), Cynthia McKinney (ex-DP, now Green Party) and Bob Barr (ex-RP, now Libertarian Party) . I realize I have to a certain extent compared apples and oranges here: parties (Google Insights) vs. candidates (Pollster.com). However, when I attempted to rectify this by adding the candidates to the Google Insights terms, this did not work: Obama and McCain's overwhelming media presence just distorted everything. In a way, I propose that searches for the parties might be a better indicator of the real, underlying political support for the candidates. It is of course also possible that the interest in the parties reflects rather on the congressional races. Anyway, let's see what the graphs told us, starting with Colorado:





The DP/Obama was ahead of the RP/McCain in general. September did see a tightening on Pollster.com but an actual overtaking of the DP by the RP in Google Insights for Search. Next is Florida:





The RP overtook the dominant DP in August (Google Insights) while Pollster.com showed McCain on top with only a tightening of the race in August. When we got to the present though, Pollster.com does point at a tie. So we had conflicting evidence here. The next "toss-up" state I tested was Indiana:





The DP was the most Google-popular through June but by September the RP had taken the lead. The opinion poll trend line however showed McCain ahead the whole time with some temporary tightening only in September. This state too offers a contrast between the two graphs.

Note that so far the "third parties" have not shown up yet in the Pollster.com graphs because they didn't cross the threshold to allow for a regression analysis. Tomorrow, I will continue this experiment with other "toss-up" states.

Toyota vs. General Motors vs. Volkswagen vs. Ford vs. Honda

I faced off the largest car manufacturers in the world this time. These would be in order of number of cars produced (2007):

1. Toyota (incl. Lexus + Scion + Daihatsu + Isuzu)
   
2. General Motors (incl. Buick + Cadillac + Chevrolet + Daewoo + GMC + Holden + Hummer + Opel + Pontiac + Saab + Saturn + Vauxhall + Wuling + Oldsmobile)
   
3. Volkswagen (incl. Audi + Bentley + Bugatti + Škoda + SEAT + Scania + MAN)
   
4. Ford (incl. Lincoln + Mercury + Aston Martin + Volvo + Mazda + Jaguar + Land Rover)
   
5. Honda
   

I let Google Insights for Search compare these sets of names. So what was the result?



The ranking so to speak in Google -popularity worldwide was different from the production-numbers list above:

1. Ford
   
2. General Motors
   
3. Honda
   
4. Toyota
   
5. Volkswagen
   

The discrepancy was most marked for Toyota and Ford that switched places. Actually, Ford was ahead of everyone else. The latter were constantly jostling for position in a narrow band. Most everyone declined through the years except for Volkswagen and Honda. Let us look at some country-specific graphs, beginning with the US:



There was a bit more seasonality here. Otherwise, the only major difference lay in Volkswagen's poor performance and the fact that Honda was the only car company to increase. Note however that "less than 25% of searches containing 'volkswagen+audi…' are categorized as Automotive." Still, I couldn't remove the Automotive filter because a few of the terms had significant non-automobile meanings, e.g., SEAT = seat. What about Germany?



Locally-headquartered Volkswagen was tops, then followed Ford and General Motors. Honda and esp. Toyota were stuck at the bottom. Honda and Volkswagen were the only ones to grow. Next, the United Kingdom:



Ford was solidly in the lead, followed by Volkswagen. All companies declined. Let's make one more graph, this time using data from Japanese (English-savvy) web surfers:



Honda and Toyota were clear leaders on their home turf. Volkswagen and General Motors were struggling. Still, General Motors slightly grew overall. Honda and Ford saw the biggest improvement.

Nancy Pelosi vs. Henry Paulson vs. Barney Frank vs. Ben Bernanke vs. Harry Reid vs. Mitch McConnell vs. John Boehner vs. Spencer Bachus et al.

Today, I investigated the major players in the negotiations leading to the proposed "mother of all bailouts" a.k.a. the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. First, I faced off Treasury Secretary Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke and the major Democratic leaders involved: House Speaker Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Reid and House Financial Services Committee Chair Frank.



I limited the graph to the year 2008. Pelosi was the most powerful: constantly-high Google-popularity. However, towards the end, the financial crisis pushed Frank and esp. Paulson to the forefront, overtaking her. In case there were any doubt, the House of Representatives weighed heavier than the Senate: just compare Pelosi and Reid. Let's have a look at what a face-off with the major Republican leaders (House Minority Leader Boehner, Senate Minority Leader McConnell, House Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Baucus) yielded:



Paulson and Bernanke dominated the Republicans, esp. at the end. Considering the results of the first face-off, the latter were pretty much bystanders, at least according to their Google-popularity... Why didn't I look into President Bush and the two major presidential candidates? There was that high-profile meeting after all? Actually, I did:



As you can see, they were the elephants in the (negotiating) room, esp. Obama and McCain. Anyway, now comes the hard part: getting majorities in the House and the Senate to sign off on the bailout...

Paul Newman vs. Robert Redford vs. Clint Eastwood vs. Sean Connery vs. Charlton Heston vs. Robert Duvall

Yesterday, Paul Newman died. He was one of the greatest actors of his generation and a remarkable, generous man. I faced him off against his good friend Robert Redford with whom he was often mentioned in one breath, even though they only made two movies together: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969, and The Sting, 1973—but what movies!



I stopped the comparison at April 2008 to exclude the distorting effect of his being terminally ill and dying these last several months. I am at a loss to explain why his top point is in January 2005—does anyone have any ideas? Nevertheless, Redford did slightly surpass Newman on average regarding Google-popularity. However, Redford (72) is actually quite a bit younger than Newman (✝83). So I found four award-winning actors more of his generation who were still alive till this year: Clint Eastwood, Sean Connery, Charlton Heston and Robert Duvall.



Again to make a fair comparison, I stopped the graph at March 2008, just before Heston's death. To my surprise, Newman was preceded by Eastwood and Connery. Note esp. Eastwood's peaks in February 2005 (4 Oscars and 3 Oscar nominations for Million Dollar Baby) and in February 2007 (2 Oscar nominations for Flags of Our Fathers and 1 Oscar and 3 Oscar nominations for Letters from Iwo Jima).

Barack Obama vs. John McCain vs. Jim Lehrer

Tonight, I watched the first presidential candidates' debate at "Ole Miss" (University of Mississipi, Oxford). I thought I'd do the same thing I did for the convention speeches with the specific words uttered by Obama, McCain and—why not?—moderator Lehrer. I looked how many words they used. Also, how many sentences and characters (excl. spaces) did the individual debate parts have? I summarized these three measures in a bubble graph:



Lehrer obviously had much less to say than Obama and McCain who ended up with rather similar measures. I guess you could say that McCain used fewer but longer words in shorter sentences than Obama...

Then, using Wordle, I made a "word cloud" each of the debate contributions.

Barack Obama



John McCain



Jim Lehrer


As expected, because Lehrer was the moderator, words such as "senator," both their last names, "minutes" and "question" were prominent. Obama's most frequently used words were "going" (action sentences?), "think" (not impulsive, rash... like McCain?), "make" (constructive, tangible?) and "now" (no living in the past?). McCain's commonest words were "senator" and "know": stressing his experience perhaps? Then came "Obama" (more attacks on the person?) followed by "United States" (patriotism?), "want" (forcefulness?) and "spending" (Republican hot issue of cutting spending). These were just my initial associations of course, I wonder what a linguist would think of these patterns.


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.

Barack Obama (improved)



John McCain (improved)



Jim Lehrer (improved)