In an analysis of the language used by US presidential candidates in the last 7 elections, Christian Leuprecht and I showed that there’s a language pattern that predicts the winner, and even the margin. The pattern is this: use lots of positive language, use no negative language at all (even words like ‘don’t’ and won’t’), talk about abstractions not policy, and don’t talk about your opponent(s). (For example, Trump failed on the fourth point, but was good on the others, while Hillary Clinton did poorly on all four.)
In some ways, this pattern is intuitive: voters don’t make rational choices of the most qualified candidate — they vote for someone they relate to.
Why don’t candidates use this pattern? Because the media hates it! Candidates (except Trump) fear being labelled as shallow by the media, even though using the pattern helps them with voters. You can see this at work in the way the opinion pieces decide who ‘won’ the debates.
The Democratic debates show candidates using the opposite strategy: lots of detailed policy, lots of negativity (what’s wrong that I will fix), and lots of putting each other down.
Now it’s possible that the strategy needed to win a primary is different to that which wins a general election. But if you want to assess the chances of those who might make it through, then this pattern will help to see what their chances are against Trump in 2020.
Incumbency effects in U.S. presidential campaigns: Language patterns
matter, Electoral Studies, Vol 43, 95-103.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379416302062
Finding Bad Guys in Data 