Topic Modeling U.S. Presidential Nomination Speeches

The aim of this project was to locate and analyze trends in political rhetoric from the late 1800’s to the present day. We got our data from The American Presidency Project, an extensive online archive of Presidential speeches, letters, addresses, orders, and much more. A url link to the archive can be found at the bottom of this page. For this project, we looked at every US presidential nomination speech to date, including the acceptance letters of late 19th century candidates. (The practice of giving nomination speeches began in 1900.) We ran these speeches through a Topic Modeling Program, creating 50 topics, and then analyzed these topics is a few different ways.

First, we looked at the content of the topics themselves. While a few topics seemed to be unintelligible– a kind of vague collection of political buzzwords– most of the topics revealed a theme, agenda, ideology, or concern underlying the words they contained. We referred back to our data to see which presidents featured most heavily in which topics, and occasionally looked at the content of the speeches themselves in order to better identify what each topic was about. We then named the topics accordingly. Here are the results:

ethics: justice, relationship, convictions, sons, employment, transportation, constitutional, sacred, cure, attending

public: national, people, united, congress, foreign, made, capital, legislation, public, service

government: democratic, present, system, respect, government, court, islands, interstate, courts, industrial

elementary education: applause, fight, children, al, security, gore, schools, character, public, honor

trade: trade, american, great, protection, secure, competition, found, reform, loss, currency

community betterment: century, opportunity, community, build, good, years, children, education

war: war, trust, military, american, good, idea, young, win, months, opportunity

Middle East invasion: opponent, security, stand, path, safer, iraq, health, free, provide, afghanistan

law: convention, law, interest, support, common, citizens, honor, place, election, executive

inner city crime: country, people, bridge, crime, police, year, protect, immigration, clinton, violence

national unity: america, americans, years, today, united, live, love, heard, bring, pledge

working class: work, american, jobs, workers, future, change, middle, energy, home, men

political parties: party, republican, democratic, republicans, seek, power, vision, opportunity, responsibility, program

progressivism: human, democracy, progress, private, citizens, plans, liberty, moral, serve, women

ending war: tonight, american, states, americans, fellow, peace, proud, home, campaign, mr, vietnam

business: business, power, control, order, commission, small, proper, dollars, principle, property

political involvement: part, justice, interests, life, policy, direct, means, resources, industrial, power

campaign: political, leadership, today, pledge, present, campaign, deal, principles, strong, man

world peace: freedom, world, peace, great, progress, united, victory, convention, chairman, lincoln, peaceful

election: time, year, special, system, abroad, bad, show, recent, politics, successful, agreements

president’s life: president, life, people, friends, good, tonight, truth, country, heart, greatest, dream, kind

commerce: states, tariff, products, wages, cent, democratic, duties, market, commercial, markets

memorializing: moment, nation, day, man, honor, reduce, state, clinton, remember, violence

children’s future: make, children, child, working, values, back, work, election, family, won

social welfare: family, don, hard, give, tonight, school, college, health, parents, welfare

world unity: world, people, united, history, today, things, join, means, face, home

global policing: world, american, peace, service, ready, day, security, people, great, land

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prosperity: platform, prosperity, republican, mr, policies, fair, bill, labor, brought, point

city on a hill: men, great, free, make, man, nation, faith, task, peace, nations

federal government: country, administration, government, state, states, party, money, president, policy, regard

agricultural policy: public, party, farm, development, aid, laws, relief, men, large, preserve

national debt: president, years, tax, audience, congress, spending, members, taxes, increase, budget

geopolitics: free, influence, europe, true, demand, purpose, obligation, seeking, destruction, thought

military: war, defense, record, system, international, called, duty, production, form, civilization

integrity: strength, times, choice, courage, meet, personal, coming, understand, grateful, sense

jobs: job, obama, business, start, trump, jobs, days, decades, doesn, success

action: purpose, act, matter, long, mere, involved, good, return, failures, passed

family: plan, put, class, mother, care, taxes, kids, fought, gave, companies

labor: labor, confidence, things, nomination, land, high, convention, failed, victory, senator

economy: inflation, past, growth, soviet, friends, interest, deep, groups, state, week

We charted several of the topics over time in order to further identify how they mapped onto various political climate and concerns, and to see what they might reveal about changes in politics themselves. Below are our results. The y axis determines the prevalence of a topic in terms of the number of words of a given topic contained in the speeches of that year. Thus, the effects of differences in speech length aren’t immediately clear from the graphs. Students conducted further mini-studies on topics that seemed particularly revealing or interesting; some of these analyses can be found at the bottom of the page.

We also charted the same topics as utilized in Republican speeches only, in order to examine changes in the party’s concerns and ideologies over time. The graphs below depict Republican topic prevalence over time.