Even if you knew nothing about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton—a virtual impossibility given the breathless, nonstop media coverage of both presidential candidates over the past year—the vast differences between the two are obvious from the moment they open their mouths. Trump’s style tends toward stream-of-consciousness, and his word choice toward the apocalyptic: “terrible,” “violent,” “murdered,” “terror.” Clinton’s speechifying is more poll-tested, carefully deploying terms that highlight her more positive, inclusive view of America: “safe,” “kindness,” “dreams,” “equal.” Their contrasting styles are easily observable, but data analysis also reveals that Trump’s and Clinton’s disparate oratory is more than anecdotal.

Luminoso, an artificial-intelligence-based natural-language analytics company that got its start at M.I.T., ran several months’ worth of campaign appearances by both Clinton and Trump, including both speeches and debates, and found key differences between the two candidates. Researchers broke down the findings into two categories—word choice and topic selection—and found that not only did Clinton frequently use more positive language, she also spoke in broader terms about issues such as “jobs,” “income,” and “poverty.” Trump, on the other hand, narrowly tailored his speeches to repeatedly reference specific issues, including trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the North American Free Trade Agreement, and topics like the Second Amendment.

There wasn’t much that Trump and Clinton agreed upon during their three debates together, and Luminoso’s data confirms they were mostly talking past each other. “Americans,” “families,” and “economy” were the top three topics Clinton discussed, while Trump focused primarily on “disaster,” “NAFTA,” and “border.” There was some overlap among the terms both used, however: Clinton’s most-mentioned term was “Donald,” coming in at 19 percent, while Trump’s second most-mentioned term was “Hillary,” at 9 percent. Rounding out Clinton’s top three most-mentioned terms were “country” and “president,” while Trump’s included “country” and “jobs.”

Courtesy of Luminoso.