No time to watch the President Obama’s and Mitt Romney’s speeches at the Democratic and Republican (respectively) conventions? You’re about to get the highlights in 30 seconds — word cloud style.
We’re usually helping clients secure motivational keynote speakers for their business conventions and conferences rather than breaking down political speeches here at The Speakers Group, but I thought it would be fun and interesting — emphasis on fun — to compare President Obama’s and Mitt Romney’s convention acceptance speeches side-by-side in word cloud format.
If you look at the words alone, what were the U.S. presidential candidates talking about the most? Let’s see…
Mitt Romney’s Speech Word Cloud
Romney spoke first, at the Republican National Convention in Tampa on Thursday, August 30, so we’ll look at his word cloud first. (By the way, this is created by pasting Romney’s speech transcript into the Wordle web app, which discounts all the common words like “a,” “an,” “the,” etc. and gives “greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.”) Here it is:
Romney’s Top 10
Based on the size of the word “America,” you can tell that it was said far more frequently than any other word. Here are the top 10 words spoken by Romney — again, not counting the “common words”:
- America – 53 times
- Americans – 21 times
- President – 21 times
- American – 18 times
- World – 18 times
- Better – 17 times
- Every – 15 times
- Future – 13 times
- Job – 13 times
- Jobs – 13 times
- Obama 13 times
(Okay, so it’s a “Top 11,” but there was a tie.)
President Obama’s Speech Word Cloud
President Obama spoke at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday, September 6, and when we paste his speech transcript into the Wordle tool, here’s what we get:
Obama’s Top 10
Obviously no one word jumps out the way “America” does in Romney’s speech. Here’s Obama’s top 10:
- New – 20 times
- Future – 16 times
- Jobs – 16 times
- America – 15 times
- Years – 14 times
- Believe – 13 times
- Hope – 12 times
- Must – 12 times
- Pay – 12 times
- Workers – 10 times
(By the way, you might find it interesting to compare either of the 2012 speeches to Obama’s word cloud from his 2008 speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, based on this transcript. “Promise” was his #1 word outside the list of common words in that speech, spoken 31 times, followed by “America,” spoken 22 times.)
What’s Your Take?
If you watched or listened to the speeches, how did these words resonate with you?
Or if you’re just seeing these words for the first time, what are your immediate observations?
Is the frequency of the words spoken significant to you?
Chime in and discuss!
