The Final Debate: A Statistical Analysis
So David Cameron may have come out top in the instant polls, but what do the statistics say?
Well, distribution between the speakers in terms of opportunities were very even. In the BBC transcript (pdf file) Brown and Cameron both produce 34 paragraphs of text, with Clegg only 2 behind, whilst David Dimbleby vigorously maintained control of proceedings, with 81 paragraphs to his name.
It may come as a surprise that ‘tax’ and ‘cut’ were the terms that Brown stuck to very tightly (counts of 55 and 30 respectively). Cameron got in 37 counts of ‘government’ and Clegg went in for ‘money’ and ‘pay’ more than either of his opponents.
We’ve opened up the document to phrase mapping (experimental!). So if you want to add in your own phrases e.g. ‘my best mate Obama’ and check the rhythm of that phrase throughout the document you can do. We’ve also extended our analysis somewhat and you can now check the full list of filtered words.
View the augmentation and analysis here.
As always if you have any suggestions or want to get in touch we’re more than happy to talk about it, so get in touch.