Politics and sports have more in common than people realize. Both have large international followings, media sources designated to following them and substantial economic incentives. Politics and sports also have extensive amounts of data and an invested interest to predict and sway outcomes.
Political data techniques have come under scrutiny. Cambridge Analytica was a British political consulting firm. By December of 2015, they had claimed to have collected up to 5,000 data points on 220 million Americans (1). They were heavily involved with the Trump campaign in 2016. Cambridge Analytica claimed credit for the Trump Campaign’s victory, citing their data research and targeted marketing for making the difference in the electoral college. Proponents argue this claim, and many political scientists believe the electoral college is beneficial to the republican party. However, one cannot disregard Cambridge Analytica’s potential impact.
While I have nowhere near the data nor the skills to do this sort of analysis, I still wanted to do my own investigation. A technique I worked with this fall was sentiment analysis. Sentiment analysis determines what feelings or tone (sentiments) a person or figure communicates through their words. Sentiments can be binary like positive or negative or more specific emotions like fear, anger or optimism. For my analysis, I chose to examine Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s presidential acceptance speeches. President-elect Biden is a self-proclaimed centralist, while President Trump is a non-conformist nationalist. I wanted to examine the specific words each person used, the speech’s positivity, and the particular sentiments. I anticipate that acceptance speeches are, in general, overwhelmingly positive. This is somewhat common sense as who would not be optimistic after being elected the President of the United States. I am also curious about the overall sentiment of their speeches. Regardless of one’s belief about the virus (a widely politicized issue in America), COVID-19 has vastly influenced the state of American politics. The future of how the President plans to face this challenge (economically and physiologically) is likely within his speech.
I scraped both their speeches off the internet. There was a significant amount of data manipulation and munging that had to be done first (2). If the full detailed code interests you, click here: https://rpubs.com/chris_ewanik/709586.
First, I examined their most used words. I filtered out stop words (words that join emotionally null words/non-nouns) in an attempt to see the sustenance of their speeches and if any themes/ideas were evident.
In President Trump’s plot, you see classic presidential words like “people,” “country,” “hard,” “campaign” and “dream.” These terms are humble and used to thank their supporters. I found words like “unbelievable,” “incredible,” and “guy” characteristic of President Trump. A sentence with the likes of “incredible guy,” “unbelievable fantastic time,” and “tough hard country” sounds like the highlights of Trump’s speech at one of his rallies.
There were references to people I did not expect: Reince Priebus and Rudy Giuliani. Rudy Giuliani is the famous lawyer, ex-major of New York City. Rudy gets an extensive thanking for all his work during the campaign at around 9:00 minutes. You will likely remember that Mr. Giuliani and his team of lawyers were a key ally of President Trump in his many voter fraud lawsuits. Rudy was also a victim of Sacha Baron Cohen in Borat 2.
President Trump praised Reince and even invited him on stage after disputing claims about the two having a contentious relationship. Reince would speak on the mic introducing the then President-elect. President Trump later chose Reince as the White House Chief of Staff. Mr. Priebus would resign after allegations surfaced about him leaking info to the press about President Trump’s interactions with Russian Spies during the campaign. Reince left his post on July 27th, 2017, giving him the shortest tenure in chief of staff history (3). Russian interference was the first of many allegations/scandals during the Trump Presidency.
Next, we look at President-elect Biden.
President-elect Biden’s speech had a greater variety of patriotic words: “America,” “nation,” “country,” and “American.” “Folks,” indeed, sounds much like Joe. Words I found interesting were: “time,” “battle,” “ahead,” “faith,” “moments,” and “united.” These terms ooze of the coronavirus. While it’s true that the vaccine is arriving and its rollout is revolutionary, the world is still in uncharted ground. The US is seeing the end of the thanksgiving surge. We likely have not seen the full impact of COVID cases from Christmas and New Year’s Eve. People have blamed high US COVID-19 numbers on a lack of federal government action/leadership. Biden is speaking to the battle against COVID-19 ahead, urging Americans to have faith and be united in the times ahead.
Additionally, the world has not seen the actual economic effects of the pandemic. Large government bailout and injection into the economy (especially in rich countries) has kept many aspects of the market strong. These injections will not last forever. As the dust settles, citizens will better understand the battle they face in the attempt to bring back lost jobs and small businesses.
It seems that Biden spoke to the challenging landscape of COVID-19. Perhaps his speech will be less positive in tone.
| Negative | Positive | Net | % Positive | |
| # Words | 24 | 88 | 64 | 78.6 |
| Negative | Positive | Net | % Positive | |
| # Words | 26 | 125 | 99 | 82.8 |
The analysis indicated that President Trump’s speech is slightly more optimistic. When I rewatched President Trump’s speech, I found it genuine and appreciative. Donald even congratulated “Crooked Hilary” and spoke to all Americans calling for unity. Perhaps the specific sentiment of the two speeches will be closer than I thought (make sure to swipe and see all categories of this table if on a mobile device).
| Trust | Anticipation | Fear | Joy | Anger | Disgust | Sadness | Surprise | Negative | Positive | |
| # Words | 95 | 65 | 24 | 55 | 21 | 6 | 22 | 18 | 33 | 132 |
| Trust | Anticipation | Fear | Joy | Anger | Disgust | Sadness | Surprise | Negative | Positive | |
| # Words | 47 | 32 | 10 | 32 | 5 | 8 | 12 | 11 | 37 | 83 |
Biden has a more emotionally expressive speech compared to President Trump. Categories like “surprise,” “disgust,” and “negative” were all within a ten-word difference. Biden spoke extensively to the COVID-19 pandemic using words speaking of “anticipation,” “fear,” and “anger.” Surprisingly, Biden also used more joyous words in his speech.
“Trust.” What a far-reaching aspect of the presidency. The world’s sociopolitical climate just changed. COVID-19 has the potential to alter trade deals, international treaties and global superpower standings. With the rise of fake news (and deep-fakes not far down the road), all citizen’s trust is vital to the success of governments. The rise of populism and extremism could interfere with democracy. Lawsuits and false claims of fraud surrounding US elections do nothing but undermine and delegitimize programs that have been in place for hundreds of years. People take democracy for granted. Democracy, however, is more fragile than many realize. With the rise of China, Putin’s grasp of Russia and the fractures of Brexit, the free world will look to America for leadership.
Keep in mind that January 5th is the date of the Georgia state runoff elections. Here, constituents revote on their Senators. This election will decide which party controls the senate. President-elect Biden will lose much power to pass legislation and bills without these seats. Data suggests that Democrats are less likely to vote in a runoff election, but Democrats seem confident about their odds. If anyone is by chance reading this and an eligible Georgian voter, I hope you vote. The members of this state have the opportunity to influence the next four years of American politics. Each and every vote will count immensely. Until next time, thanks for reading.
~ Chris
Sources:
- “About Us”. Cambridge Analytica. Archived from the original on 16 February 2016. Retrieved 27 December 2015.
- Referenced this Kaggle lesson for munging help: https://www.kaggle.com/rtatman/tutorial-sentiment-analysis-in-r
- “Kelly Sends Off Scaramucci, But Real Test Will Be Taming Trump”. Bloomberg. August 1, 2017. Archived from the original on August 2, 2017. Retrieved August 4, 2017.
Grit Performance 