Swing
For swing states, we chose to analyze Florida and Pennsylvania, both of which were key states for campaigning in the 2016 election and had defining influences on the election outcome.
FLORIDA
PENNSYLVANIA
BOTH VOTED FOR
Hillary Clinton
Donald Trump
IN THE RESPECTIVE PRIMARIES.
CURRENT EVENTS
In Florida, pertinent issues included:
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Education policies
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Gambling regulations
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Legalization of medical marijuana
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Criminal justice
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Tax cuts & spending
In Pennsylvania, pertinent issues included:
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Racial equality
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Workers' rights
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Retirement age
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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)
Florida
MOST FREQUENT WORDS:
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Trump*
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Republican*
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Clinton*
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Primary
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Rubio
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Obama*
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Senate
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Bush
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Democratic*
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GOP
MOST FREQUENT WORDS:
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Trump*
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Republican*
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Clinton*
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Democratic*
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Obama*
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Campaign
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People
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Nominee
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County
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Hillary
Pennsylvania
MOST UNIQUE WORDS:
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FLORIDA: Tampa, accessed, Detzner, Hillsborough, Pinellas, Beruff, Ingoglia, Pasco, Pace, Dade, Bucher, sources
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PENNSYLVANIA: Lancaster, evening, Hanover, township, Rendell, Delaware, Amish, Harrisburg, populist, Shuster
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 swing states are highly similar. Both states focused 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 'senate', 'campaign', 'nominee', 'people'. etc. Overall, it appears that local news in both Florida and Pennsylvania tend to focus more on the opinions on individual candidates rather than general issues in the state, and there does not seem to be a common issue of concern.
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However, it is interesting that Rubio and Bush are more commonly mentioned only in Florida. Rubio's role as senator of Florida likely emerged him as a presidential contender in the Florida primaries because of his connection to the state, similar to how Ted Cruz's contention appealed to Texans. While Bush is not a native of Florida, his terms of presidency were quite defining for American politics, especially in national security. Given Floridian concern about gun control and criminal justice, it is reasonable that Bush's policies and legacy would be discussed in a state-wide context during election season.
Combined Text Analysis
While the individual state analysis reflected some state commonalities and differences, the combined analysis reflected an interesting choice of language among articles in both states. In fact, most of the words with high significance (i.e. most unique) seemed to be focus on either counties with election disputes, or on influential political figures within each state.
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By examining the list of significant words more closely, we can see that the narrative Floridian news is driven by opinions of local politicians. Among the names mentioned as Ken Detzner, Florida's secretary of state; Blaise Ingoglia, representative of Florida, former GOP state chair, and a Rubio supporter; and Carlos Beruff, a Republican senator in Florida. Since Florida holds 29 electoral votes, it is highly influential on the election outcome and naturally comes under more scrutiny for its voting processes. There were concerns over elections in Pasco County, which tried to fight against state control over Election Day; Miami-Dade County, where the elections supervisor is appointed, not elected; and Palm Beach County, where the elections supervisor Susan Bucher tried to address how independents were unable to vote in the primaries due to not being registered under a party.
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Pennsylvania's words seem to tell a different story. The state mentioned Joseph Stoltzfus, an Amish resident who considered running for president. This issue is truly one unique to Pennsylvania given the concentration of Amish people within the state. Joe Shuster, a former Republican representative of Pennsylvania, called for tax reform to fund infrastructure. The rising popularity of populism was cited as a factor that might switch Pennsylvania from Democratic to Republican, a change that actually occurred during this election. These phrases reveal the multi-facetedness of elections as various social and economic issues are all brought into discussion during each cycle.
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