Donald Trump falls somewhere between “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen. Ben Carson resembles A.W. Tozer’s “The Pursuit of God.” Marco Rubio has a lot in common with “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” while Jeb Bush is a little simpler and sunnier — closer to “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,” Marie Kondo’s tribute to decluttering.
These comparisons aren’t about the candidates’ policy platforms. Mr. Trump has not advocated a great rafting trip down the Mississippi, at least not yet. They are instead based on an analysis of the candidates’ speaking styles in this year’s presidential debates, measuring both the complexity of their speech and the positivity (or negativity) of the words they use. To help make their speaking styles concrete, we compared them with a range of books, drawn from the most commonly downloaded titles on Project Gutenberg and supplemented with selections from our personal libraries.
Mr. Trump stands out as the simplest speaker by far and also one of the more positive. Though he is highly critical of his opponents and often rails against how terrible the world is today, he spends more time talking about how great America will be under a Trump administration. In the opposite corner of the matrix is Bernie Sanders, who prefers both complex language and dire descriptions.
This analysis, based on a widely used academic approach, has its limitations, of course. But it also adds something important to the understanding of the campaign. Most voters don’t actually dive into position papers and choose the candidate whose health care plan hews closest to their own views. Voters are influenced heavily by style.
In a campaign in which analysts have been surprised by the appeal of outsiders, it’s worth noting that the two most prominent outsiders — Mr. Trump and Mr. Carson — stand out for the positivity of their language. (So does Mr. Bush, but he has had other problems on the campaign trail.) By contrast, Rand Paul, the Kentucky senator whom some pundits expected to be a force but has attracted little support, tends to rely on negative language to express his ideas — even more so than Mr. Sanders.
And although Mr. Trump’s campaign appears to have hit its first rough patch, he remains near the top of the polls — and remains by far the simplest speaker of the candidates. “He speaks like a businessman,” said Frank Luntz, the Republican consultant known for his insight into the importance of political language. “Businesspeople do not use commas — they speak in short bursts. Lawyers use commas.”
Sharon Jarvis, a professor at the University of Texas who studies political communications, agreed. “Not only is he using brevity to make his case, but he uses brevity as a pivot to avoid responding to others,” she said. “In a sense it’s his offense and his defense at the same time.”
One striking aspect of the analysis is that the Republican candidates are debating in much simpler patterns than the Democrats. The only Republican who uses language as complex as the Democrats — slightly more complex, in fact — is Ted Cruz, a former solicitor general and law professor. His employment history shows in his debate rhetoric, with a level of complexity similar to “Beowulf.” (The speech patterns of President Obama in the 2008 debates were equally complex.) Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mr. Sanders have similar levels of complexity but are on opposite ends of the positivity spectrum: She is even more positive than Mr. Trump.
The complexity gap between the parties may reflect their ideologies.Research on statements from senators dating to the 1980s, by the psychology professor Phil Tetlock, suggests that Republicans tend to be drawn to “cognitive simplicity.” Where liberals prefer contingency and context, conservatives prefer certainty and clarity. This gap is most evident in the debating style of Mr. Trump. “Trump has the language of the board room, the language of entertainment,” Ms. Jarvis said. “He really speaks to the conservative base who would prefer not to hear complex arguments.”
There are also structural reasons for Republican candidates to embrace more simplified rhetoric. With 10 candidates on stage fighting for airtime, there’s increased pressure to speak in sound bites to get noticed. “The zinger, the thing that cuts through, that’s what’s going to work,” said Elvin Lim, a professor at the National University of Singapore and author of “The Anti-Intellectual Presidency.” “Candidates don’t have the luxury of thinking about the rhetoric of governance.”
To conduct the analysis, we used an index called the Simple Measure of Gobbledygook, or SMOG for short, developed by the psychologist G. Harry McLaughlin in the 1960s, and measured each candidate’s language in this year’s presidential debates. The formula is based on the number of words of three syllables or more you use per sentence. This means you’ll tend to get a higher score if your sentences run longer, or for if you use a lot of very big words.
It’s not a perfect gauge of complexity — books can use short sentences and small words and still contain complex language — but it’s a decent approximation. It’s also important to make a distinction between language complexity and the complexity of the underlying ideas. Nonetheless, this chart provides a rough guide to where the candidates are trying to place themselves in the debates and in the race for the presidency.
Below, a collection of candidates and their most similar books.
Jeb Bush
“The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up”
Mr. Bush’s campaign has struggled, but in the two Republican debates this year his language has been the most positive of any candidate other than John Kasich. Of all the books in our database, his language is closest in style to "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up," the best-selling guide to decluttering your home.
Ben Carson
“The Pursuit of God”
In the two Republican debates thus far, Mr. Carson has landed roughly in the middle of the pack: simpler than Mr. Cruz, more complex than Mr. Trump. Perhaps fitting for someone who has made his faith a cornerstone of his campaign, in our corpus, his rhetoric lands closest to "The Pursuit of God," a classic work of Christian literature.
Hillary Clinton
“Persuasion”
With much of the party apparatus lining up behind her, it has been easier for Mrs. Clinton to rely more on positive language. In the Democratic debate, the only candidate to use more positive rhetoric was Lincoln Chafee, who has since dropped out of the race.
Ted Cruz
“Beowulf”
Mr. Cruz’s debate style is much more complicated than that of his fellow Republican candidates, close to works like Beowulf and Don Quixote. The candidate whose debate rhetoric Mr. Cruz most resembles in terms of complexity and positivity is a fellow Harvard Law alumnus: Barack Obama in the 2008 debates.
Marco Rubio
“Journey to the Center of the Earth”
Mr. Luntz said he wouldn’t change a word of Mr. Rubio’s rhetoric, which is slightly more complicated than the typical Republican's. “On paper, Rubio delivers the most substantial, detailed and comprehensive statement of any candidate,” Luntz said. His problem “is that he does it so fast that it loses some of its gravitas.”
Bernie Sanders
“Around the World in 80 Days”
Mr. Sanders’s language has tended to be more negative, in contrast with Mrs. Clinton. While the content of his speech hasn't been negative — focusing on what he would do as president, rather than the flaws in his opponents — he often expresses his ideas using somewhat more negative words, closest in tone and complexity to the translation of Jules Verne’s “Around the World in 80 Days.”
Donald Trump
“The Legends of King Arthur”
No candidate uses simpler language than Mr. Trump, whose average sentence is just 12 words long. Some examples include:
“I wrote ‘The Art of the Deal.’ ”
“Obviously, I’m doing pretty well.”
“I am totally in favor of vaccines.”
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