Debate 1 Analysis

I just re-watched the debate on YouTube. While I watched, I kept tally scores on each candidate in several categories. Here are the results:

Mentioned George Bush:
Obama: 14
McCain: 2

Mentioned their own proposed policy:
Obama: 64
McCain: 70

Mentioned opponent's proposed policy:
Obama: 12
McCain: 21

Mentioned/alluded to their own record:
Obama: 20
McCain: 38

Mentioned/alluded to their opponent's record:
Obama: 23
McCain: 33

Mentioned a specific piece of legislation that they proposed:
Obama: 0
McCain: 2 (League of Democracies, 9/11 Commission)

Please note: These numbers are not intended to be exact. I watched the debate in real time and made tally marks along the way. These numbers do not represent exact statistics. However, I will maintain that they give a fair representation of what really happened in the debates. Each number is surely off by a few tallies, but no numbers are off by magnitudes and any mistakes towards one candidate were surely repeated against the other candidate equally.

Factual Generalizations

Whether or not my numbers are perfect, any count or re-count of the same statitics will reveal the following true generalizations:

• McCain and Obama both talked about their own proposed policy about equally.
  
  
• McCain talked about Obama's proposed policy about twice as much as Obama talked about McCain's proposed policy.
  
  
• McCain talked about his own record about twice as much as Obama talked about his own record.
  
  
• McCain talked about Obama's record more than Obama talked about McCain's record.
  
  
• McCain mentioned legislation that he proposed. Obama did not talk about legislation that he proposed.
  
  
• Obama mentioned George Bush seven times more than John McCain did.
  
  
• Obama mentioned George Bush's policy more than he mentioned John McCain's proposed policy.
  
  
• McCain talked more about his own record than he did Obama's record. Obama talked more about McCain's record than he did his own record.

The Conclusion

This debate turned out exactly the way that any reasonable person predicted. Obama talked more about nothing than John McCain. John McCain talked more about actual records more than Barack Obama. Barack Obama focused on Bush because he knows that John McCain is stronger and better than Bush. He knows John McCain is a maverick and he must hide that fact.

More notes

I counted George Bush references by making a tally every time a candidate mentioned Bush's administration directly and did not relate the actions of the Bush administration directly to their own actions (both candidates did this at least once). If I had counted the number of times a candidate referenced "the last eight years" or "the last four years", Barack Obama's score assuredly would have been over twenty and John McCain's would have remained the same.

I started out with also counting the number of praises and criticisms issued by each candidate. I stopped doing this when it became too difficult to keep track of. However, when I stopped (about midway) Obama and McCain had criticized each other equally. Obama had praised John McCain several times, and John McCain had praised Barack Obama zero times.

So, I'm making it up, right Sparky?

Ok. Go ahead and do it yourself. Produce your own numbers. I plan to do it again sometime soon and come up with a new set of numbers which will assuredly be different than these but will also assuredly produce the same patterns.