COnservative
For liberal states, we chose to analyze Texas and Georgia. Texas was chosen because it is a traditionally conservative state, consisted of many rural counties; Georgia was chosen because it has one of the highest amount of electoral votes out of all conservative-voting states (after Texas, Florida and Ohio).
TEXAS
VOTED FOR
Ted Cruz
GEORGIA
VOTED FOR
Donald Trump
*based on Republican primaries
CURRENT EVENTS
In Texas, pertinent issues included:
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Public education
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Immigration
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Border security
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Political corruption / leadership
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Declining oil prices
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Access to medical care
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Infrastructure
In Florida, pertinent issues included:
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Government finances
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State judiciary
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Taxes
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Education
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Religious liberty
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Budget & taxes
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Criminal justice
TEXT ANALYSIS
By archiving the top 1000 local articles in the time leading up to the election period, we were able to perform text analysis through Voyant tools to identify the most frequent words mentioned for local articles in each state. By comparing articles from both states, we also used TF-IDF to identify words unique to each state within this category. (* = repeated words)
Texas
MOST FREQUENT WORDS:
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Trump*
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Republican*
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Cruz
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Campaign*
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County
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Voters*
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GOP*
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Obama*
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Democratic
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Bush
MOST FREQUENT WORDS:
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Atlanta
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Constitution
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Trump*
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Republican*
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Clinton
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Campaign*
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Voters*
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Obama*
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GOP*
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Primary
Georgia
MOST UNIQUE WORDS:
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TEXAS: Morrow, Cornyn, Paxton, Williamson, Pence
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GEORGIA: DeKalb, Isakson, Gwinnett, Fulton, Gingrich
Combined comparison
SO WHAT?
Individual State Text Analyses
Based on the text analyses above, we can see that the commonly discussed topics between the two conservative states are highly similar. Both states focus on the presidential candidates (Trump & Clinton) as well as Obama, who was president at the time. In addition to the frequently occurring candidate names, the word clouds seem to contain largely general political vocabulary such as 'law', 'association', 'board', 'nomination', 'officials' etc. Overall, it also appears that regional news in both Texas and Georgia tend to mention individual candidates over social issue. There does not seem to be a common issue of concern.
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The 2016 Republican Primaries were also largely divisive, and there were a large number of contenders for the GOP nomination. Out of all candidates, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, the elected candidates of Texas and Georgia respectively, had definitely received significant media attention compared to their competitors.. Since Cruz had long established his following as one of the Texan senators, it is no surprise that he emerged as the Texan candidate of choice. On the other hand, Trump's win in Georgia (or any other Republican state) was unprecedented given his lack of political experience; It could have been this very factor that presented him as a more ideal candidate, or the more extreme ideals he advertised that appealed to certain populations in the nation.
Combined Text Analysis
While the individual state analysis was not particularly reflective of state commonalities and differences, the combined analysis reflected an interesting choice of language among articles in both states. In fact, after taking out names of places and news sources from the TF-IDF analysis (e.g. 'Austin Statesman', 'Atlanta Constitution), which made up a majority of the results, most of the words with high significance (i.e. most unique) are references to specific places or important politicians within each state.
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By examining the list of significant words more closely, we can see that Texan figures include Robert Morrow, former chairman of GOP in Travis County, Austin; John Cornyn, senator of Texas and former Republican majority whip; Ken Paxton, Texas Attorney General, former senator of Texas, and Tea Party conservative; and Mike Pence, Trump's running mate and current vice president of the U.S. Given their political experience, their opinions on the presidential election or even the Republican primaries were likely influential for Texans.
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Georgia's significant words show a similar trend. First, certain counties came under scrutiny for poor political practices. DeKalb County faced a series of governance-related challenges in 2016, including corruption and misuse of federal funds. Gwinnett County officials faced criticism after their Board of Registration and Elections rejected a call to provide Spanish-language ballots and voting materials to its residents. Fulton County residents were allegedly forced to cast provisional ballots. Second, regarding politicians, local articles also mentioned Johnny Isakson, a Republican senator from Illinois, and Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House and senator of Georgia for over two decades. These persons and social issues likely shaped the narrative of the 2016 elections in Georgia, unsurprisingly amplifying the injustices and negative issues within the State.
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