A recent study reveals the vocabulary size, stress levels, and emotional range of prominent politicians.
The US presidential race has seen Donald Trump and Kamala Harris appeal to Americans' concerns — and bash each other — in the hopes of securing the vote. But, swaying voters isn't just about what you say, it's how you say it.
Wordtips used AI to analyze the dialogue of the country's most prominent politicians and ranked them according to the vocabulary, signs of stress, and sentiment identified in their language. The analysis was completed in October 2024, and the team focused on dialogue that was least likely to have been pre-written.
Republican senator for Texas Ted Cruz ranks highest for vocabulary size, using an average of 484.9 unique words for every 1,000 spoken, followed by California governor Gavin Newsom (470.4).
Donald Trump and JD Vance are among the politicians with the smallest vocabularies; both use only around 400 unique words per 1,000.
Democrats tend to be slightly more stressed than Republicans — but according to the study, Republican Mitt Romney is the most stressed of any prominent US politician, with almost 31 percent of his statements and responses showing signs of stress.
Elizabeth Warren (28.71 percent) and Bernie Sanders (27.59 percent) are the third- and fourth-most stressed politicians, respectively.
Tim Walz's language suggests the lowest stress levels overall, at just 5.45 percent.
When it comes to emotional range, Mike Pence and Ted Cruz use the highest percentage of negative language in their speech, while the most positive politicians are Dean Phillips and Nancy Pelosi.
Click images to enlarge
Via Wordtips.
Chapman University started fielding a survey on Americans’ greatest fears around Halloween a decade ago, including everything from fears of biowarfare to ghosts, reptiles and blood. In the years since the study’s authors have made several observations on the changing mindsets of U.S. adults.
For one, corruption of government officials has topped the list of fears every year since the survey began. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. respondents said that they were either afraid or very afraid of the prospect when surveyed in 2024, although it has come down from the peak of 79.6 percent of respondents picking the option in 2020/2021. This fear ranks even higher than more personal fears of losing a loved one or a loved one falling seriously ill.
According to the researchers, the fear of corruption extends not only to the federal government but also to local and state politics. Reflecting on the impact of such a fear, the researchers suggest that the fact that “citizens may be attracted to populist rhetoric decrying career politicians and the political establishment could have its roots in distrust driven by fear of corruption.”
Although fear of the outcome of the upcoming presidential election was not among the top ten highest-ranking fears in the 2024 survey wave, just over half of respondents said they feared the prospect (51.6 percent). By party leaning, Democrats (56 percent) and Independents (54 percent) were slightly more likely to have this worry than Republicans (50.4 percent). The authors say this fear is likely linked to the fear of corruption, as well as fears of civil unrest (48.6 percent of respondents) and in some cases, the fear of an overthrow of the U.S. government (39.4 percent).
The results of this survey also tend to reflect current events. Christopher Bader, Ph.D., chair and professor of sociology at Chapman University, explains that “recent world events have stirred fears about war and terror attacks.” Of the top ten fears, six were linked to war or different forms of warfare, including fears about Russia using nuclear weapons (#5), the U.S. becoming involved in another world war (#7), North Korea using nuclear weapons (#8), terrorist attacks (#9), cyberterrorism (#3) and biological warfare (#10).
Moreover, there has been an increase in general levels of fear reported between 2015 and 2024. Where only the top fear was held by over 50 percent of respondents in 2015, all 10 top fears were held by over 50 percent of respondents by 2018. Bader says this increase could partly be due to the public’s changing method of information consumption: “One thing we’ve noticed over time through this survey is that where people get their information from is changing,” he said in a statement. “Social media and websites target people by showing them things that they are afraid of. Through algorithms, people are being fed their fears and we believe that’s increasing people’s overall level of fear.”
This list highlights that while some fears are rooted in recent events and are rational, others are not or may be overblown. For example, where 33.3 percent of people fear being murdered by a stranger, 22.2 percent of people said they were afraid of being killed by someone they know. This is despite data having shown that the former is far less likely and that crime rates have fallen in the U.S. over the years. Fears are still important though, the study leaders note, as they can motivate different actions, which, as Bader highlights, could have implications for this week’s elections.
