Biden spoke for longer (41:32 = 2,492 seconds) than Ryan (40:12 min = 2,412 seconds) (debate timing by CNN).

Ryan used +16.2% (7,708 vs 6,631) more words than Biden — he spoke faster with a rate of 3.20 words/second, +20.3% (3.2 vs 2.66) faster than Biden's 2.66 words/second. Biden and Ryan delivered nearly the same relative number of unique words, with Biden edging Ryan slightly by Δ_rel=+1.1% (Δ_abs=+0.2%, 18.6% vs 18.4%).

Biden delivered -8.9% (6,631 vs 7,280) fewer words than Obama and spoke -6.0% (2.66 vs 2.83) words/second more slowly. Ryan's speed was also slower than his mate, Ryan, by -16.0% (2.83 vs 3.37), and he delivered slightly fewer words, -1.1% (7,708 vs 7,791). Biden delivered -8.9% (6,631 vs 7,280) fewer words than Obama and spoke -6.0% (2.66 vs 2.83) words/second more slowly.

The debate was more dynamic than the presidential debate, focusing on a greater variety of issues. Correspondingly, the vice-presidential candidates' unique word fraction was higher than their presidential counterparts in the first debate. Recall that Obama had a unique word fraction of 17.2% while Romney had 15.6%. This debate saw Biden with 18.6% and Ryan with 18.4% unique words.

Table 1

legend

a c b d

a :: word count b :: word count, as fraction in total in debate c :: unique words in (a) d :: unique words in (a), as fraction in (a) bar :: proportion of (a-c):c

Ryan's fraction of non-stop words is largest at 45.2%, +5.6% (45.2 vs 42.8) than Biden.

Biden had significantly fewer exclusive non-stop words than Romney, -24.1% (578 vs 762). Compare this to Obama's, who had +6.8% (597 vs 559) more exclusive words than Romney in the first debate. The spread of exclusive words between Biden/Ryan and Obama/Ryan is quite different. Whereas Obama and Romney distinguished themselves with roughly the same number of words (597 vs 559), Ryan had a great deal more than Biden (762 vs 578).

Table 2

legend

a c b d

a :: total number of words, for a given category (all, stop, non-stop) b :: (a) relative to words in the debate if category=all, otherwise relative to words by the candidate c :: number of unique words with set (a) d :: (c) relative to (a) bar :: proportion of (a-c):c

Neither Biden, who was least likely to reuse words with a non-stop average frequency of 2.6, nor Ryan approach Romney's average word frequency of 3.2.

Ryan liked to repeat words that were exclusive to him, with an average frequency +12.6% (1.7 vs 1.51) higher than Biden.

Table 3

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a b c

a :: average word frequency b :: largest word frequency in 50% of content c :: largest word frequency in 90% of content bar :: proportion of a:b:c

Both candidates' sentences were short (Biden 5.5, Ryan 5.6 non-stop words/sentence). Compare these numbers to those of Obama, whose sentences had more structure with an average length of 8.4 non-stop words.

Biden's longest sentence was 91 words. Not quite Obama's 112-word whopper, but close.

Biden, 91 words — We need more, but 5.2 million - if they'd get out of the way, if they'd get out of the way and let us pass the tax cut for the middle class, make it permanent, if they get out of the way and pass the - pass the jobs bill, if they get out of the way and let us allow 14 million people who are struggling to stay in their homes because their mortgages are upside down, but they never missed a mortgage payment, just get out of the way.

Ok, that was not a fair sentence. He was obviously blabbering. Let's look at his next largest, at 90 words.

Biden, 90 words — And instead of signing pledges to Grover Norquist not to ask the wealthiest among us to contribute to bring back the middle class, they should be signing a pledge saying to the middle class we're going to level the playing field; we're going to give you a fair shot again; we are going to not repeat the mistakes we made in the past by having a different set of rules for Wall Street and Main Street, making sure that we continue to hemorrhage these tax cuts for the super wealthy.

Ryan on the other hand had a relatively terse longest sentence.

Ryan, 44 words — But we want to see the 2014 transition be successful, and that means we want to make sure our commanders have what they need to make sure that it is successful so that this does not once again become a launching pad for terrorists.

Table 4

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a b c

a :: average sentence size b :: largest sentence size for 50% of content c :: largest sentence size for 90% of content bar :: proportion of a:b:c

Ryan pounced on Biden with greater total number of unique nouns, verbs and adjectives. Relatively, Biden had a higher fraction of words across all parts of speech. He particularly distinguished himself with more diverse use of adjectives.

If you compare the relative unique word percent spreads to the first presidential debate, the difference is stark. Whereas Obama and Romney had their relative unique word fractions within 2-3% for each part of speech, the difference between Biden and Ryan grows to as much as 7.5% for adjectives.

Table 5

legend

a c b d

a :: total number of words for a given POS (all, noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun) b :: (a) relative to all words by candidate c :: unique words in (a) d :: (c) relative to (a) bar :: proportion of (a-c):c

Noun repetition was similar for both candidates. Ryan repeated verbs, adjective and adverbs at levels consistently higher than Biden. Both candidates repeated adverbs less frequently than their verbs, which does not hold true for Obama or Romney.

Table 5

legend

a b c

a :: average word frequency b :: largest word frequency in 50% of content c :: largest word frequency in 90% of content bar :: proportion of a:b:c

Ryan had a consistently higher number of adjective/noun, adjective/verb and adjective/pairings than Biden, suggesting that he inserted them into more sentences than Biden. Biden had more adjective/adverb combinations, which indicate sentences in which both concept and action are modified.

Table 6 a,b

legend

a c   d

a :: total number of pairs, for a given category (e.g. verb/noun) c :: number of unique pairs within set (a) d :: (c) relative to (a) bar :: proportion of (a-c):c

Table 6c

legend

a c   d

a :: unique pairs for Joe Biden c :: unique pairs for Paul Ryan d :: (c) relative to (a) (i.e. Paul Ryan relative to Joe Biden) bars :: (a) and (c)

With the exception of adverbs, Ryan had significantly larger total exclusive words for each part of speech. Both candidates shared 25.8% of nouns, lower than 29.3% that we saw with Romney and Obama in their first debate. Shared verb and adverb fractions were similar. Much more exclusivity in adjectives was seen — only 19.5% of adjectives were shared, compared to 27.4% in the frist presidential debate.

Table 7c

legend

a d b e c f

a :: total number of words in set (e.g. obama \ romney, obama ∩ romney, obama ∪ romney , for a given part of speech b :: (a) relative to all exclusive words in n+v+adj+adv c :: (a) relative to all words in n+v+adj+adv d :: unique words in (a) e :: (d) relative to (a) f :: (d) relative to all unique words in n+v+adj+adv bar1 :: normalized ratio of (a-d):d bar2 :: absolute ratio of (a-d):d for all POS groups (first column) or POS group (other columns)

Biden delivered almost the identical number of top-level noun phrases as Obama (233 vs 234). Ryan's speech was terse with 0.47 unique noun phrases per unique noun (compare Romney at 0.42 and Obama at 0.43).

Table 8a

legend

a d b e c f

a :: number of noun phrases b :: (a) relative to number of all noun phrases c :: number of noun phrases per noun d :: number of unique phrases e :: (c) relative to (a) f :: number of unique noun phrases per unique noun bar :: normalized ratio of (a-c):c

Table 8b

legend

a b c

a :: average noun phrase size, in words b :: largest noun phrase size in 50% of content c :: largest noun phrase size in 90% of content bar :: proportion of a:b:c

Whereas Obama and Romney had a similar number of exclusive top-level noun phrases in their first debate (226 vs 224), and Biden's level was similar (222), Ryan had +27.9% (284 vs 222), more than Biden.

Table 9a

legend

a c b d

a :: number of noun phrases b :: (a) relative to number of all noun phrases c :: number of unique phrases d :: (c) relative to (a) bar :: normalized ratio of (a-c):c

Table 9b

legend

a b c

a :: average noun phrase size, in words b :: largest noun phrase size in 50% of content c :: largest noun phrase size in 90% of content bar :: proportion of a:b:c

Biden's Windbag Index is extremely low, -33.2% (199 vs 298) lower than Ryan. Obama and Romney had values of 468 and 685 in their first debate. The two factors for Biden that contributed to a higher component than Ryan was the fraction of non-stop words (incidentally, this was also the fraction for which Obama's value was lower) and the fraction of noun phrases that were top-level.

Biden's focus is "american" and "middle-class". For Ryan, it's the generic "people".

Biden has "fact", "friend" and modifies with "particularly" and "mostly". Ryan fulfils the Republican fearmongering agenda with "nuclear", "lose", "failed" and "attack". Recall that Romney had similarly devastating words ("lose, "hurt" and "crushed").

Biden thinks reality is a buddy, with "fact" and "friend" being prominent. Ryan's language is combative with "weapons", "marine" and "terrorists". Ryan does say "youtube", which means he has the Google.

Biden uses "love", which is wonderful, and ryan has "failed", "try", "lose" and "run".

When Ryan mentions "lower", it's not about expectations. Tax, surely.

Ryan has "pretty" and "safely", slightly unusual words given the threatening nature of his frequently used verbs and nouns. His "faster" is matched by Romney's "always".

Relatively few exclusive words in the center are surrounded by a cloud of shared (grey) words. Quite a diffent view than the first presidential debate, for which this cloud was full of large words with fewer grey contributions.

Biden mixes "believe" a lot, which shows up in the verb pairs as "believe free", "aid believe" and "making believe". The last pair sounds vaguely more like Romney than Biden.

Ryan fulfils the mandate to spread fear with "terrorist attack". "Infringing catholic" comes from his sentence

They're infringing upon our first freedom, the freedom of religion, by infringing on Catholic charities, Catholic churches, Catholic hospitals.