@HillaryClinton vs. @realDonaldTrump

A comparison of the words unique to the candidates on Twitter.

If like me, you’ve browsed the Twitter feeds of the presidential candidates (and have since been cursed with a constant itch to look), you know that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump tweet differently.

Clinton’s feed looks a lot like what you expect from a presidential candidate, whereas Trump’s feed feels more like a mix of things. I mean, well, do I really have to explain? You know what they’re like. If you don’t look at Twitter, just imagine a more succinct, 140-characters-at-a-time version of what you saw in the debates.

So I wondered if you could see the differences between Clinton and Trump with a simple word breakdown of their tweets. I grabbed the tweets available — ones between June 3 and October 17 of this year — and took a look. Here are the results.
 

words

In the chart above shows the words most unique to each candidate. They are ordered by uniqueness, and bars represent the rate the words were used during the time period. Clinton often refers to Trump, but doesn’t use his Twitter handle, and she often retweets others such as @timkaine, @potus, and @flotus. Trump tends to informally retweet with quotes, which is why his screen name is towards the top of his list.

Towards the middle of each list, you see the topics each candidate tends to talk about. I like how the percentage sign for poll results pops up on Trump’s side.
 
 

adjectives

If you look at the adjectives, you get a pretty good idea of the vibe of each campaign. Notice the different horizontal axes. Trump uses way more adjectives in his tweets.
 
 

punctuation

But maybe we don’t have to look at the words at all. Maybe we can look just at punctuation. The marks are sorted by more unique to Trump to more unique to Clinton, top to bottom. Trump uses the exclamation point about 35 times more than Clinton. Clinton’s punctuation usage doesn’t stand out so much, other than that she uses more ellipses to tweet quotes.

Become a member. Support an independent site. Make great charts.

See What You Get

Learn to Visualize Data See All →

Choropleth Maps and Shapefiles in R

Fill those empty polygons with color, based on shapefile or external data.

How to Draw and Use Polygons in R

R provides functions for basic shapes, but you can also draw your own for maximum fun.

Getting Started with Network Graphs in R

Add the vertices. Connect them with edges. Repeat as necessary.

How to Make a US County Thematic Map Using Free Tools

There are about a million ways to make a choropleth map. The problem is that a lot of solutions require expensive software or have a high learning curve. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Favorites

Marrying Age

People get married at various ages, but there are definite trends that vary across demographic groups. What do these trends look like?

Sleep Schedule, From the Inconsistent Teenage Years to Retirement

From the teenage years to college to adulthood through retirement, sleep is all over the place at first but then converges towards consistency.

Reviving the Statistical Atlas of the United States with New Data

Due to budget cuts, there is no plan for an updated atlas. So I recreated the original 1870 Atlas using today’s publicly available data.

When Americans Reach $100k in Savings

It was reported that 1 in 6 millennials have at least $100,000 saved. Is this right? It seems high. I looked at the data to find out and then at all of the age groups.