The following is an analysis of the online conversations from Facebook and Twitter three days prior to the October 22nd Presidential Debate and three days after the debate. The data was extracted using proprietary linguistic technologies developed by Focalytic.
Sentiment Assessment: Attitude Attitude analysis takes a look at the percentage of total comments about each candidate containing words that can be defined as “excellent”, “good”, “average”, “fair”, and “poor”. For example, someone may Tweet “I thought Mitt Romney did awesome last night”, and the comment would be counted as “excellent”, or someone may post a comment on Facebook such as “Mitt Romney is repulsive” and the comment would be counted as “poor”. Dozens of synonyms are used to define each of the five attitude terms.
Comparing Facebook and Twitter comments about Mitt Romney for the three days leading up to the debate with Facebook and Twitter comments about Mitt Romney for the three days after the debate we see a slight decrease in comments that use words associated with “poor” to describe Mitt Romney. However, there was also a decrease in words associated with “good” and an increase in words associated with “average” and “fair” indicating a slight overall shift away from positive and extreme negative sentiment to neutral sentiment.
Pre and post debate comments about Barack Obama reflect a more definitive shift than with Mitt Romney. Overall there was a clear increase in positive comments and a decrease in negative comments. This may be a good indication that in general supporters of Barack Obama felt good about his performance in the final debate.
Sentiment Analysis: Emotion Emotional analysis measures eight different emotions, four positive: “admiration”, “joy”, “optimism” and “trust”, and four negative: “anger”, “annoyance”, “pessimism”, and “doubt”. Each emotional element on the graph sits across from its polar opposite. As with attitudinal sentiment, dozens of synonyms help define each emotion. For example, “Trust” is also associated with “confidence”, “believe”, and “rely on”, just to name a few. The term “Admiration” is associated with “love”, “appreciate”, “thankful” and other similar terms.
Admirable comments of Mitt Romney on Facebook and Twitter decreased slightly after the debate, but overall remained strong. On the other hand, comments associated with “trust” increased, perhaps indicating an increase in believability, while comments associated with “anger” decreased, perhaps do to his less contentious nature compared to the previous debates. The only negative emotive element that saw an increase was “pessimism”. However, this was countered by a slight increase in “optimism” indicating that after the debate people likely felt both more certain and less certain about Mitt Romney’s ability to win the presidency.
As with Mitt Romney, Barack Obama saw a slight decrease in “admiration”, which may be an
indication that the debate didn’t help either candidate improve their image. The most significant increase in positive emotion for Barack Obama was “joy”, which could correlate with how supporters felt about his performance during the debate. Barack Obama also saw a slight decrease in “trust”, which when taken in contest of Mitt Romney’s increase in “trust” may indicate that people felt that Romney’s responses during the debate were more believable than Obama’s.
Unsavory Comments Unsavory comments represent comments on Facebook and Twitter that are extremely negative in tone. These comments include many of the terms associated with negative attitudinal and emotional sentiment, but also add curse words and much harsher language to the mix.
The percentage of attitudinal oriented comments that were found to be unsavory in nature was notably higher for Mitt Romney both before and after the debate. However, both candidates saw a marked increase in the number of unsavory comments after the debate compared to before the debate, likely indicating an increase in posts and tweets from supporters trashing the other candidate and/or his debate performance.
Analyzing the combined pre and post-debate comments by name used we see that when Mitt Romney is referred to in unsavory terms, people more often use “Mitt Romney” as opposed to “Governor Romney”. For Barack Obama, the most common name used for unsavory comments is “President Obama” as opposed to “Barack Obama”.
A full copy of this sentiment analysis is found by clicking on the following link:
The following is an analysis of the online conversations from Facebook and Twitter three days prior to the October 11th Vice Presidential Debate and three days after the debate. The data was extracted using proprietary linguistic technologies developed by Focalytic.
Sentiment Assessment (Attitude): Attitude analysis takes a look at the percentage of total comments about each VP candidate containing words that can be defined as “excellent”, “good”, “average”, “fair”, and “poor”. For example, someone may Tweet “I thought Paul Ryan did awesome last night”, and the comment would be counted as “excellent”, or someone may post a comment on Facebook such as “Paul Ryan is repulsive” and the comment would be counted as “poor”. Dozens of synonyms are used to define each of the five attitude terms.
Comparing Facebook and Twitter comments about Paul Ryan for the three days leading up to the debate with Facebook and Twitter comments about Paul Ryan for the three days after the debate we see a decisive positive shift. While comments associated with “excellent” increased by a notable amount, most significant is the drop in the percentage of comments describing Paul Ryan using words associated with “poor”.
Pre and post debate comments about Joe Biden reflect a less dramatic shift than with Paul Ryan. However, as with Paul Ryan, the percentage of comments associated with “poor” sentiment decreased by a notable margin. It appears that both VP candidates improved their image among Tweeters and Facebook users as a result of the debate.
Sentiment Analysis (Emotion): Emotional analysis measures eight different emotions, four positive: “admiration”, “joy”, “optimism” and “trust”, and four negative: “anger”, “annoyance”, “pessimism”, and “doubt”. Each emotional element on the graph sits across from its polar opposite. As with attitudinal sentiment, several synonyms help define each emotion. For example, “Trust” is also associated with “confidence” and “rely on”. The term “Admiration” is associated with “love”, “appreciate”, and “thankful”. It is also important to look at the percentage of emotional comments. If an emotional term has a small percentage, the conversations are likely being driven more by factual statements such as “Joe Biden talked about Iraq in the debate last night”, rather than emotive statements like “I loved how Joe Biden came out swinging”.
Admirable comments about Paul Ryan on Facebook and Twitter increased slightly after the debate. Additionally “optimism” also increased. However, on the other hand so did “doubt”. Paul Ryan also saw a drop in “trust” and “anger”. Overall the volume of emotional sentiment associated with Paul Ryan increased for three of the eight emotional sentiment points while decreasing for the other five.
As with Paul Ryan, Joe Biden saw a jump in “optimism”, but the increase was more substantial. Joe Biden also saw an increase in “trust”, and a decrease in “anger”, but conversely comments related to “joy” decreased. While the percentage of comments related to “admiration” remained relatively high, there was a slight decrease. Overall the percentage of comments associated with three emotions increased, while the percentage of comments associated with four others decreased, with one remaining relatively unchanged.
Unsavory Comments Unsavory comments represent comments on Facebook and Twitter that are extremely negative in tone. These comments include many of the terms associated with negative attitudinal and emotional sentiment, but also add curse words and much harsher language to the mix.
For both Paul Ryan and Joe Biden, the percentage of total comments that were unsavory increased after the debate with Joe Biden seeing the largest increase. However, the overall percentage of unsavory comments remains highest for Paul Ryan.
If you'd like to download a copy of this report click on the download analysis link. I you are interested in this type of analysis for your candidate please contact us!
Looking at several thousand comments on Facebook about Mitt Romney and President Obama, Focalytic, a social media research and text analytics company, found a slightly higher percentage of positive comments about Mitt Romney than President Obama.
Comments using positive terms in the same sentence as the candidates name such as “I think Mitt Romney will be an awesome president” are counted as positive. On the other hand comments such as “Mitt Romney is a dork” are counted as negative.
Positive:
Negative:
A total of 34 positive and 32 negative words were used to come up with the percentages and are listed above. The analysis also takes into account speech context including accounting for positive words such as “good” that can be used as a negative description such as “Mitt Romney would not make a good president”.
The data pulled was from the week of July 15 to July 21 from a sample of approximately 25,000 Facebook comments.
Romney vs. Obama
Social Media Buzz: June 27 – July 2
The following is an analysis of the online conversations from social media sites, industry blogs, review sites, forms, news sites, and top websites. The data was extracted using proprietary linguistic technologies developed by Focalytic. This summary report provides a snapshot of the online conversations currently taking place that are associated with President Obama and Mitt Romney.
Positive vs. Negative Tone The percentage of positive and negative online comments associated with Mitt Romney and President Obama are statistically even. 
Sentiment Assessment Looking beyond just positive and negative tone, we find that the online conversation associated with Mitt Romney are more extreme than those associated with President Obama. People are more likely to talk about Mitt Romney using words associated with extreme opinion such as “Excellent” or “Poor”. When it comes to a “love him or hate him” attitude, Mitt Romney is the winner.
Emotional Focus A notable percentage of the conversations about both candidates are associated with the emotion of “doubt”, but more so in the case of Mitt Romney. A high percentage of emotion associated with “doubt” is typical of negative conversations associated with the future such as “I doubt Mitt Romney will win the election” or “I don’t think President Obama can fix the Economy”.
The most defining emotion is “joy”. A higher percentage of online conversations associated with President Obama center around the emotion “joy” than with Mitt Romney.
Critical Issues - International Online conversations associated with defense dominate as the most important international issue with a slightly higher percentage associated with President Obama. One of the most notable differences can be found with regard to countries. The number of mentions associated with Mitt Romney and another country such as “France” or “Israel”, for example, occur more frequently than with President Obama.
Critical Issues - Domestic The Economy is the top issue associated with both Obama and Romney. A slightly higher percentage of online conversations associated with the economy are centered around Mitt Romney. Crime is also a leading issue with President Obama receiving the majority of the discussion. Conversations associated with the number two topic, Health Care, are dead even between Obama and Romney.
The "Sunday Morning Roundup" is an analytical summary of the Sunday morning political news maker interviews by the four major news services including, ABC 's This Week, Fox News Sunday, NBC's Meet the Press, and CBS Face the Nation. The full report of the Sunday Morning Roundup for Sunday, April 22 2012 can be found attached below. This week's conversation centered on:
ABC This Week
JOHN BRENNAN (President Obama's Chief Counterterrorism Adviser)
NBC Meet the Press
ED GILLESPIE (Former head of the party, counselor to President Bush and now a senior advisor to Mitt Romney)
ROBERT GIBBS (Former White House Press Secretary, Senior Advisor to the President's Reelection Campaign)
HILARY ROSEN
ALEX CASTELLANOS (Political strategist, Republican)
REP. CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS (Washington State, Head of the Republican Conference on Capitol Hill)
RACHEL MADDOW (MSNBC Correspondent)
BRIAN WILLIAMS (Managing editor of Nightly News)
CBS Face the Nation
HALEY BARBOUR (Former Mississippi Governor/Former Republican National Committee Chairman)
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA (D-Los Angeles Mayor/Democratic National Convention Chairman)
GOVERNOR JERRY BROWN (D-California)
FOX News Sunday
JOHN BRENNAN (President Obama's Chief Counterterrorism Adviser)
JOEL and VICTORIA OSTEEN (Preachers, On their positive and controversial message of hope)
Key findings from the interviews & conversations this week:
- JOHN BRENNAN, President Obama's Chief Counterterrorism Adviser, had the top podium time this Sunday with a strong presence on ABC This Week and Fox News Sunday. Although the subject was on defense and security, his sentiment was positive with strong emotions of Trust and Doubt. He had the strongest focus on Ability to Deliver and Improvement of all the speakers with a strong topic focus on Defense.
- ED GILLESPIE, Counselor to President Bush and now a senior advisor to Mitt Romney and ROBERT GIBBS, Former White House Press Secretary, Senior Advisor to the President's Reelection Campaign, squared off in separate interviews on NBC Meet the Press with very similar profiles -- similar sentiment (a little more negative than positive) and a strong focus on Trust, with Gillespie focusing a little more on the Economy and Gibbs focusing a little more on Defense.
- HALEY BARBOUR (Former Mississippi Governor/Former Republican National Committee Chairman), ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA (D-Los Angeles Mayor/Democratic National Convention Chairman), and GOVERNOR JERRY BROWN (D-California) all spoke on CBS Face the Nation with Brown and Barbour much more negative than Villaraigosa with Brown's emotional focus on Doubt and Barbour's emotional focus on Annoyance.
- JOEL and VICTORIA OSTEEN, spoke on their "message of hope" but interestingly had more negative than positive language and emotional language focused on Anger and Annoyance. The characteristic of their language was on Expectations for the future focusing on domestic issues and issued all of the data in the form of a prediction rather than a promise. Also it is interesting that the grade level of their speech is at a fourth grade level whereas, religious speech in general (with quotes from the Bible) is generally much higher than normal.
- ABC This Week took the top spot this Sunday in overall sentiment expressed about their programming (showing that most of the comments regarding the other programs were fact based containing little sentiment). Fox took the overall positive position with strong extreme positive speech and minimal strong negative speech. Emotion about ABC was nearly equal across all 8 emotional elements expressed about their programming; whereas, comments about NBC, CBS and Fox strongly focused on Optimism and Trust.
| Attachments:
Sunday Morning Roundup Report (4-29-2012).pdf
The "Sunday Morning Roundup" is an analytical summary of the Sunday morning political news maker interviews by the four major news services including, ABC 's This Week, Fox News Sunday, NBC's Meet the Press, and CBS Face the Nation. The full report of the Sunday Morning Roundup for Sunday, April 22 2012 can be found attached below. This week's conversation centered on:
ABC This Week SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (Maine Senator, the ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee)
REP. CAROLYN MALONEY (New York Congresswoman from the House Oversight Committee)
NBC Meet the Press REP. PETER KING (R-NY)
REP. DARRELL ISSA (R-CA)
DAVID AXELROD (Senior adviser to President Obama's re-election campaign)
CBS Face the Nation NEWT GINGRICH (Republican Presidential Candidate/Former House Speaker)
HALEY BARBOUR (Former Mississippi Governor/ Chairman, Republican National Committee)
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-South Carolina)
FOX News Sunday SEN. JOE LIEBERMAN, I-CONN.
GOV. MITCH DANIELS, R-IND.
JOE TRIPPI (Former Democratic Campaign Manager)
Key findings from the interviews & conversations this week:
- Lieberman, Rove, Axelrod, and Gingrich all shared the top podium this Sunday. Surprisingly Lieberman, Axelrod, and Gingrich interviews were news-maker interviews whereas Rove was part of a panel and was a dominant presence. All were equally positive with Gingrich and Axelrod focusing on Emotions of Trust and Lieberman focusing on Doubt. Gingrich and Rove had the strongest "Calls to Action" of all the Sunday morning interviews. Gingrich, Axelrod, and Lieberman issued substantially more promises than predictions showing their inclination to guarantee the outcome.
- With much of the Sunday discussion about the Economy, Collins, Maloney, and Issa focus was especially strong on the Economy. Although generally more negative than positive, the focus was on Accountability and Expectations. There was a notable decline in "Call to Action" and Improvement this Sunday meaning that there is likely some discouragement associated with economic progress and mitigating signs of improvement.
- Of the two governors Daniels and Barbour, Daniels was very negative whereas Barbour was very positive. Both showed some elements of Trust, but Barbour was more Optimistic while Daniels showed elements of Annoyance, Pessimism, and Doubt. Both were strongly focused on Predictions rather than Promises which showed that they were more comfortable with forecasting than guaranteeing an outcome.
- The major rhetoric across the Sunday morning interviews was on Unity with the strongest calls for unity coming from congressional representatives.
- In public opinion, ABC had the strongest overall positive score (when adjusting for negative speech); also having the strongest Extreme Positive speech and weakest Extreme Negative speech scores. Fox had the strongest Extreme Negative speech but also had one of the strongest Extreme Positive speech scores showing a very polarized reaction to their programming. CBS had a surprisingly high Emotion score for Optimism meaning the public was very optimistic about what was said in their programming.
| Attachments: Sunday Morning Roundup (4-22-2012).pdf
The "Sunday Morning Roundup" is an analytical summary of the Sunday morning news maker interviews by the four major news services including, ABC 's This Week, Fox News Sunday, NBC's Meet the Press, and CBS Face the Nation. The full report of the Sunday Morning Roundup for Sunday, April 8 2012 can be found attached below. This week's conversation centered on:
ABC This Week
PASTOR RICK & KAY WARREN
NBC Meet the Press
GOVERNOR JOHN KASICH (Ohio)
SENATOR DICK DURBIN, D-Ill.
CBS Face the Nation
REVEREND LUIS CORTES, JUNIOR (President, Esperanza)
CARDINAL TIMOTHY DOLAN (Archbishop of New York)
RICHARD LAND (Southern Baptist Convention)
RABBI DAVID WOLPE (Sinai Temple, Los Angeles)
ANDREW SULLIVAN (Newsweek)
MIKE WALLACE (In Memoriam)
FOX News Sunday NEWT GINGRICH, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
SEN. KENT CONRAD, D-N.D.
SEN. RON JOHNSON, R-WIS.
Key findings from the interviews & conversations this week:
- Easter Sunday morning was predominantly marked with interviews with religious leaders. Pastor Rick Warren had the dominant platform on ABC This Week. Although religion was the strong theme, much of the conversation was politically based and focused on policies and the presidential campaign (with a special emphasis on Mitt Romney and his Mormon affiliation). Others participating in the religious discussion were on CBS Face the Nation including Reverend Luis Cortes, Junior (President, Esperanza), Cardinal Timothy Dolan (Archbishop of New York), Richard Land (Southern Baptist Convention), and Rabbi David Wolpe (Sinai Temple, Los Angeles). Marked by some Extreme Positives by some speakers there was a marked absence of Extreme Positives and Extreme Negatives with most of the conversation sentiment being "middle of the road." The Warrens' remarks were simple at a surprisingly low grade level; whereas, the others were significantly above the norm (7th grade). Most were tentatively positive but Warren and Dolan had strong negative emotion. Land had the strongest Call to Action while Cortez and Dolan had the strongest Call for Improvement.
- Newt Gingrich was the only Presidential Candidate interviewed on Sunday and had carried nearly 20% of the podium time. This gave him time on Fox News Sunday to cover several policy issues. His strong emotion was Trust and his strong focal characteristics were Ability to Deliver, Accountability, and Expectations. He gave more promises than predictions and spent much of his time on the economy, but had a strong call for unity.
- Senators Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Ron Johnson (R-WIS), and Dick Durbin (DIll.) were the congressional representatives interviewed Sunday. Their strong emotion was Trust and their strong characteristic was Expectations for the future with Promises dominating Predictions. Similar to the Gingrich and the other religious speakers there was a strong call for Unity -- which seemed to be the marked characteristic for all the speakers on Easter Sunday.
- Gov. John Kasich (Ohio) was interviewed on NBC Meet the Press and was one of the most positive speakers. His strong focus was on Accountability and Expectations for the Economy.
- NBC Meet the Press took the top spot this Sunday in positive public opinion with CBS Face the Nation receiving the most polarized comments having strong extreme positive and negative opinion. A notable point was the strong positive emotion of Optimism associated with CBS Face the Nation and the strong negative emotion of Doubt associated with NBC Meet the Press.
Public Reaction to the News Shows:
| Attachments: Sunday Morning Roundup Report (4-8-2012).pdf
The "Sunday Morning Roundup" is an analytical summary of the Sunday morning news maker interviews by the four major news services including, ABC 's This Week, Fox News Sunday, NBC's Meet the Press, and CBS Face the Nation. The full report of the Sunday Morning Roundup for Sunday, April 1 2012 can be found attached below. This week's conversation centered on:
ABC This Week REP. PAUL RYAN, CHAIRMAN, BUDGET COMMITTEE
REP CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, RANKING DEMOCRAT ON THE HOUSE BUDGET COMMITTEE
NBC Meet the Press
RICK SANTORUM, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
SEN. RON JOHNSON (R-WI)
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY)
CBS Face the Nation
VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN
NEWT GINGRICH, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
RON PAUL, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
FOX News Sunday RICK SANTORUM, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
GOV. HOWARD DEAN, FORMER DNC CHAIR
GOV. HALEY BARBOUR, FORMER RNC CHAIR
DR. BEN CARSON, DIRECTOR, PEDIATRIC NEUROSURGERY, JOHNS HOPKINS
Key findings from the interviews & conversations this week:
- Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, and Newt Gingrich were the Republican presidential candidates interviewed, but it was Santorum that had the strong position being interviewed on Fox News Sunday and NBC Meet the Press covering nearly a quarter of the volume of words of the Sunday morning interviews. Santorum was very positive with a strong focus on Romney and Wisconsin regarding number of delegates. Gingrich focused on President Obama and rising oil prices. Paul was much more negative and focused on money, debt, and budget problems with rhetoric focus on freedom and improvement. It is interesting to note that Ron Paul gave no predictions or promises and focused on statements of fact.
- Vice President Biden had the longest single interview on CBS Face the Nation, giving him time to focus his message and defend the administrations policies. Most of his focus was negative and directed at Republicans and Mitt Romney in specific . Covering a broad array of topics, Vice President Biden focus on somewhat negative expectations for the future given a Republican presidency.
- Sen. Ron Johnson and Sen. Chuck Schumer had very limited time in their interviews with Sen. Johnson focusing on his support for Mitt Romney. Sen. Schumer focused mostly on healthcare, law, and the supreme court. Schumer's rhetoric focused on Rights and Unity.
- Rep. Paul Ryan and Rep. Chris Van Hollen covered multiple policy issues including healthcare, energy and oil, but with a budget and debt focus. Ryan was strongly Optimistic; whereas, Van Hollen expressed more Doubt than others interviewed this week.
- Gov. Howard Dean, Former DNC Chair and Gov. Haley Barbour, Former RNC Chair both had platform time with Barbour focusing on strong criticism of the current administration covering a wide array of policies with strong rhetoric regarding unity. Dean defended the administrations policies with a focus on responsibility , doubt, and expectations for the future.
- ABC This Week took the top spot this Sunday in positive public opinion with NBC Meet the Press receiving the most negative opinion. Fox News Sunday had the strongest Anger emotion with ABC and NBC both receiving strong opinions of Doubt.
Public Reaction to the News Shows:
| Attachments: Sunday Morning Roundup (4-1-2012).pdf
The full report of the Sunday Morning Roundup for Sunday, March 25 2012 is attached below. The conversation centered on:
ABC This Week
DAVID PLOUFFE, PRESIDENT OBAMA'S TOP STRATEGIST
REPRESENTATIVE MICHELE BACHMAN
NBC Meet the Press
DAVID PLOUFFE, PRESIDENT OBAMA'S TOP STRATEGIST
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show" and author of "Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power"
CBS Face the Nation
RICK SANTORUM, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
REPRESENTATIVE PAUL RYAN, HOUSE BUDGET CHAIRMAN
SENATOR CHUCK SCHUMER
FOX News Sunday
DAVID PLOUFFE, PRESIDENT OBAMA'S TOP STRATEGIST
REPRESENTATIVE PAUL RYAN, HOUSE BUDGET CHAIRMAN
Key findings from the interviews & conversations:
- David Plouffe, President Obama's Top Strategist had the strong Sunday morning podium (a combined interview word volume of nearly 50% of the total interview volume) appearing on ABC This Week, NBC Meet the Press and Fox News Sunday. Nearly every linguistic graph is similar across each of his interviews except that he issued more promises than predictions on Fox News Sunday than the other programs. This demonstrates that he is sticking very close to message... even to sentiment and emotion regarding the issues of each message.
- Senator Rick Santorum is the only presidential candidate interviewed Sunday morning and has been the most consistent candidate on the Sunday morning news-maker interviews. He demonstrated a strong shotgun approach to discussing policy and rhetoric covering a broad range of policy issues and using all of our selected rhetoric elements.
- Representative Barbara Bachmann and Representative Paul Ryan are the two congressional representatives interviewed. Bachmann's speech is marked with strong negative emotion (Anger, Annoyance, Pessimism, and Doubt) across a broad range of issues. Ryan was interviewed on both CBS Face the Nation and Fox News Sunday and focused strongly on economics. His speech was marked with admiration and optimism.
- Senator Chuck Schumer focused on expectations for improvement. Covering a broad range of issues (6 issues), he had the podium for the shortest amount of time trying to fit in a broad range of messages.
- Rachel Maddow, MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show" spoke about her new book titled "Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power." It is interesting that in the interview she gives no promises and no predictions, expressed very little emotion, and focused nearly exclusively on defense with some supportive focus on economics.
This week we added a new section to the report that focuses on the online public reaction to these key news shows and their guests. It's interesting to see how the public reacted to the conversation and what was presented:
| Attachments: Sunday Morning Roundup (03.25.12).pdf
The full report of the Sunday Morning Roundup for Sunday, March 18 2012 is attached below. The conversation centered on:
ABC This Week
RICK SANTORUM, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
NBC Meet the Press
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ)
MR. GEORGE CLOONEY, ACTOR/ACTIVIST AND MR. JOHN PRENDERGAST, CO-FOUNDER, THE ENOUGH PROJECT
CBS Face the Nation
DAVID AXELROD, PRESIDENT OBAMA'S CHIEF CAMPAIGN STRATEGIST
REINCE PRIEBUS, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN
FOX News Sunday
MITT ROMNEY, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
MR. GEORGE CLOONEY, ACTOR/ACTIVIST AND MR. JOHN PRENDERGAST, CO-FOUNDER, THE ENOUGH PROJECT
Key findings from the interviews & conversations:
- George Clooney had the strong Sunday morning podium appearing on both NBC Meet the Press and Fox News Sunday. Clooney had both the strongest extreme attitudes and the strongest “call to action.” His strong expectations were driven by promises (no predictions). This is telling of his activist passion, strong request for support, and promises about his work in Africa.
- Senator Rick Santorum and Governor Mitt Romney, although they were interviewed on separate programs, their conversation elements were nearly equal – focused equally on promises, on international and domestic policies (covering a broad spectrum of policies), and nearly every key aspect of rhetoric. This shows each candidate is using a strong shotgun approach to their campaign strategy.
- Senator McCain’s focus was highly similar to the Republican candidate’s speech patterns using broad based rhetoric covering a broad base of issues; whereas, Clooney, Axelrod, and Priebus were much more focused in their topical uses of rhetoric.
- Mr. Axelrod and Mr. Priebus gave more predictions than anyone else interviewed Sunday morning with strong positive emotion by Mr. Priebus. On the other hand Mr. Axelrod used strong negative emotional language driven by Anger and Doubt focused on negative Expectations, Accountability, and Ability to Deliver. Rhetoric used by both is similar but is differentiated by Mr. Priebus’ focus on Freedom and Mr. Axelrod’s focus on leadership.
- Public Sentiment was about 50% positive for all the programs except Fox News Sunday which was around 30% positive. Across all the news forums most of the conversation (about 75%) was on the interviews with only about 25% discussing round table topics and opinions.
| Attachments: Sunday Morning Roundup (3.18.12).pdf