I had to make some judgement calls on these speeches, as it was hard to separate a speech device from a “will” at times. For instance, Obama makes statements like, “We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country,” it implies a policy “will”\u00a0 – an Obama administration will work to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. Removing these grey areas (there were four in the Obama speech: unwanted pregnancy, the second amendment, immigration, and gay and lesbian rights) reduces Obama from 0.82 to 0.73.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n I also counted McCain’s statement:<\/p>\n We’ll produce more energy at home. We will drill new wells off-shore, and we’ll drill them now. We’ll drill them now . . . we’ll build more nuclear power plants . . . We’ll develop clean-coal technology. We’ll increase the use of wind, tide, solar, and natural gas. We’ll encourage the development and use of flex-fuel, hybrid and electric automobiles. [2]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n as “wills”, not “bys”, since he didn’t lay out policy measures to accomplish them. This is in contrast to Palin, where I counted a similar statement as implying “bys”. In the end, because of the way the quotient is constructed, it doesn’t affect her score and only affects the interpretation of statements like this.<\/p>\n I also had to add two new issues categories to McCain, since he made statements about domestic and foreign policy which didn’t fit neatly into national security, or ethics reform. This increased his denominator, adding more issues at the cost of having not addressed others he lists on his website.<\/p>\n Here is my original accounting:<\/p>\n What jumped out at me was the range of issues important to the candidate and how well they were covered. With the addition of “reaching across the aisle by hiring democrats and independents” and “establishing good relations with Russia\u00a0 and building foundations for a lasting peace”, McCain raised his issues count from 18 to 20. However, he said or implies “wills” on only 6\/20 issues, leading to an issue coverage of just 30%. Obama, on the other hand, covered 13\/22 issues without adding new ones to the list, for 59% issue coverage.<\/p>\n Having an SQ of 1 or greater is preferable, and neither candidate achieved that. But, in the end, Obama came a lot closer.<\/p>\n [1] http:\/\/www.demconvention.com\/barack-obama\/<\/a> To be complete, I also analyzed the “Wills\/Bys” in the McCain and Obama acceptance speeches, to teach out the content of their words on the issues important to them. I find the substance quotient, SQ = 1\/2 * (N_wills + N_bys)\/N_issues to be: McCain: 0.45 Obama: 0.82 I had to make some judgement calls on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1037","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-politics","7":"czr-hentry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/09\/speechanalysis-2-150x150.png\")
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\n[2] John McCain Acceptance Speech<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
![<\/a><\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n \r\n Obama (page 2)\r\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n <\/div>\n\nWhat jumped out at me was the range of issues important to the candidate and how well they were covered. With the addition of “reaching across the aisle by hiring democrats and independents” and “establishing good relations with Russia\u00a0 and building foundations for a lasting peace”, McCain raised his issues count from 18 to 20. However, he said or implies “wills” on only 6\/20 issues, leading to an issue coverage of just 30%. Obama, on the other hand, covered 13\/22 issues without adding new ones to the list, for 59% issue coverage.<\/p>\nHaving an SQ of 1 or greater is preferable, and neither candidate achieved that. But, in the end, Obama came a lot closer.<\/p>\n[1] http:\/\/www.demconvention.com\/barack-obama\/<\/a>\n[2] John McCain Acceptance Speech<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To be complete, I also analyzed the “Wills\/Bys” in the McCain and Obama acceptance speeches, to teach out the content of their words on the issues important to them. I find the substance quotient, SQ = 1\/2 * (N_wills + N_bys)\/N_issues to be: McCain: 0.45 Obama: 0.82 I had to make some judgement calls on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1037","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-politics","7":"czr-hentry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/09\/speechanalysis-4.png\"){kind=link}