(Specific findings for state and national analyses are discussed on respective pages.)

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Overall, the text analysis through Voyant Tools gave some insight into the issues that mattered to states that supported each ideology. The first important observation, as noted from word frequencies, is that discussion on the presidential election tends to evolve less around specific social issues, but around the presidential candidates. The names of Trump, Clinton and Obama appeared in all the individual states' text analyses, and there was likely a lot of comparison and contrasting done by news outlets regarding their speeches, values, and stances on controversial issues. However, the other terms that appeared most frequently were either general political terms or related to the Democratic or Republican parties. This reveals that America is still very much in an atmosphere dominated by bipartisan politics, and despite the rising awareness of independent, Green Party, or Libertarian candidates, it is unknown whether they will have strong influences on the American people any time soon. Despite the differences in ideologies among all three categories, pertinent issues of concern were all similar to one another, revealing the depth of improvement and reform that the American people desired to see in the country.

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For liberal states, we discovered that most of the pertinent issues that were addressed related to larger issues regarding welfare and community, such as infrastructure and criminal justice. In addition, the language used to discuss injustices within the states tend to be very negatively charged, which could subconsciously influence how citizens of these states perceived certain candidates and their stances on social issues. However, the advocated issues for liberal states were in line with Hillary Clinton's campaign platform and could potentially explain why liberal states voted for her.

 

For conservative states, most of the significant words referred to politicians within those states, who likely were outspoken about the election or pertained to the election narrative in some way. Moreover, pertinent issues were more related to personal rights under the constitution, such as gun control and abortion laws. There also seemed to be more news coverage surrounding the voting process and its limitations (e.g. language barriers).

 

For swing states, the significant words revealed a less centralized focus of discussion, but instead revealed more character behind each state's people. For instance, Pennsylvanian news looked at issues like Amish representation or the rise of populism, while Floridians were highly concerned about voting fairness. While the data was insufficient in predicting how / why both swing states ended up with a Republican electoral majority, it does provide insight into the different issues that are unique to each state.

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The 2016 presidential elections were defining of our current political situation, as it introduced increasingly emotional language into journalism and campaigning. More extreme views are constantly being proposed by politicians without much consideration on their effects on the people. As we head into the 2020 elections, and as the younger generation of candidates rise up to fight against criminal injustice or bureaucracy, it is our hope that one day journalism will be able to play a supporting, non-partisan role in keeping the government accountable for its actions, as opposed to a platform that further promotes division and party politics.