Friday, May 04, 2007

Tag cloud for the Republican debate

I confess I'm already so bored with the '08 campaign that I haven't watched either the Dem or the GOP debate, and have instead just been reading about the results. Luckily, someone had the smart idea to put all the GOP candidate comments in a "tag cloud" format, with somewhat interesting results. In addition to what these clouds reveal about the diverging concerns of the candidates, I also suspect that the standing of each candidate is probably strongly correlated with the number of words each candidate managed to get into the debate. To wit:
  • Romney: 2371 words
  • McCain: 2060 words
  • Giuliani: 1623 words
  • Gilmore: 1475 words
  • Brownback: 1420 words
  • Tancredo: 1149 words
  • Huckabee: 1002 words
  • Paul: 995 words
  • Hunter: 945 words
  • Thompson: 924 words
The insight here is that Rudy is going down, the Thompson surge is about to crash, and Romney is, at the end of the day, looking like the guy to beat. At least, that's what that one variable suggests...
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2 comments:

  1. Unknown5:24 PM, May 05, 2007

    I couldn't believe that three out of the Republicans up there said they didn't believe in evolution.

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  2. Nils8:38 PM, May 05, 2007

    My favorite moment was when Tancreco suggested, seriously, that we revoke the sixteenth amendment (the one legalizing income tax). That was funny.

    ReplyDelete