If a picture is worth a thousand words, what’s the value of a visual consisting entirely of them?
Judge for yourself. With the help of generative artificial intelligence (AI), the Free Press created word clouds using complete text transcripts from last week’s Republican and Democratic candidate forums for Virginia’s 7th Congressional District.
The results, while far from perfect, paint a picture of two very different conversations.
In the Republican forum, which was held April 23 and featured five candidates, the word uttered most frequently was “government,” which was said 26 times. “Country” (24), “money” (23), “family” and “folks” (both 20) rounded out the top five words.
The most-used words from the Republican forum. (Graphics by Joey LoMonaco)
Twenty-four hours later, on the same stage at the Fredericksburg Convention Center, seven Democratic candidates discussed a separate set of topics.
The most-used words from the Democratic forum.
“Congress” was the most-used word at the forum with 27 instances, perhaps illustrating a subtle lexical difference in how Democrats divorce the legislative branch from its counterparts. “Question” (23; I told you this data isn’t perfect), “district” (17), “community” (13), and “marijuana” (11) round out the blue team’s top five.
In an era where political compromise is all but a forgotten art, only one term overlapped in the parties’ respective top 10s. That word was “district,” which was uttered 17 times by Democrats and 14 times by Republicans. There were, however, what could be considered close analogs, such as “money” (Republican word) and “resource” (Democratic).
Among the most obvious limitations of this exercise is the fact that the two forums featured entirely separate questions and were conducted by different moderators with (slightly) different formats. Even in a vacuum, though, lexical subtleties reveal how each party frames issues to its base.
Early voting begins May 3, with election day set for June 18.
