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Biden vs. Palin: What they said at the debate

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Democratic Sen. Joe Biden and Republican Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin debated at Washington University on Thursday night. CNN has the transcript of the debate. From the transcript, I separated what Biden said vs. what Palin said and, using Wordle, created word clouds. The clouds represent the 150 most frequently used words; the larger the word, the more often it was used.

Joe Biden


Biden said “John” 72 times, “McCain” 52 times and “going” 39 times.

Sarah Palin


Palin said “also” 48 times, “going” 42 times and “John” 34 times.

Update: A few people have asked about “maverick.” Biden said “maverick” nine times; Palin said “maverick” four times and “mavericks” twice.

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2 comments and counting

  1. Pingback - The Bird’s Nest » Blog Archive » Vice president debate a case of ‘He said, she said’   /   October 2, 2008    #

    [...] University. See the debate, get a behind-the-scenes look at the debate and the spin room, and see which words the candidates focused on the [...]

  2. MIKE M   /   October 3, 2008    #

    I love this – and must play with creating them. Let’s take all the stump speeches from each candidate and sell word cloud t-shirts.

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