[Vision2020] Trump Supportors Have the Worse Grammar by Far

[Nicholas Gier]

New Analysis Ranks Presidential Candidates by Their Supporters’ Grammar [image:
Adam Gabbatt of The Guardian newspaper holds images of possible Republican
candidates, from left, former Penn. Sen. Rick Santorum, former Alaska Gov.
Sarah Palin, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Donald
Trump, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., former
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and below, former Texas Gov.
Rick Perry, as he interviews Howard "Cowboy" Woodward holds images during
the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor,
Md., Thursday, Feb. 26, 2015. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) ORG XMIT: MDCK161] A
new analysis conducted by Grammarly, a proofreading app, analyzed the
spelling and grammar of comments on each presidential candidate’s Facebook
page. Guess which political party’s supporters made mistakes at nearly
twice the rate of the other?
Published: October 7, 2015 | Authors: Emily Atkin
<http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/author/emily-atkin/> | ThinkProgress
<http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2015/10/06/3709463/grammar-presidential-candidate-supporters/>
| News Report

Bernie Sanders supporters might think you’re great, but Donald Trump
supporters think your an idiot.

Grammar-wise, that’s at least what might be derived from a new analysis
<https://www.grammarly.com/grammar-check> released Tuesday by the
proofreading app Grammarly <https://www.grammarly.com/grammar-check>. By
analyzing the spelling and grammar of comments on each presidential
candidate’s Facebook page, the analysis found that Republican supporters
made mistakes at nearly twice the rate of Democratic supporters.

To get their results, Grammarly went to each candidate’s Facebook page,
taking comments that were at least 15 words long and expressed either
positive or neutral feelings about the candidate. Then, researchers
randomly selected at least 180 of those comments to analyze for each
candidate.

The analysis — intended by Grammarly to be “a lighthearted look at how well
the 2016 presidential candidates’ supporters write when they’re debating
online” — found that, for every 100 words written, an average Democratic
candidate supporter made 4.2 mistakes, while an average Republican
candidate backer made 8.7 errors. It also asserted that Democratic
supporters have larger vocabularies, using 300 unique words for every 1,000
words they use, compared to Republicans who only use only 245 unique words
for every 1,000.
[image: grammar-prez]

CREDIT: GRAPHIC BY DYLAN PETROHILOS/DATA FROM GRAMMARLY

Of course, there was more room for error on the Republican side, which has
nearly three times as many candidates. In addition, many Republican
candidates have a lot more Facebook supporters, meaning the pool from which
Grammarly’s researchers picked its 180 comments was much larger. For
example, Lincoln Chafee only has 9,526 Facebook followers, while Donald
Trump has 3.8 million. Overall, the average number of Facebook followers
for Republicans was 1.1 million, while the average for Democrats was about
591,000.

Taken individually, however, Democratic supporters did better than their
Republican counterparts when it came to spelling and grammar.

According to the Grammarly, former Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee —
likely receiving the best campaign news he’s had in a long time
<http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/07/its-hard-out-here-lincoln-chafee>
— has the most grammatically savvy supporters. Donald Trump’s backers make
the most mistakes.

Here are the top ten candidates (plus Donald Trump) ranked in terms of
their Facebook supporters’ grammar skills, according to Grammarly:
[image: grammar-prez2]

CREDIT: GRAPHIC BY DYLAN PETROHILOS/DATA FROM GRAMMARLY

Those who didn’t make the top ten included former Florida Governor Jeb Bush
— whose supporters came in 12th with 7.9 mistakes per 100 words — and Sen.
Marco Rubio (R-FL), whose backers came in 17th with 8.8 mistakes per 100
words. The rest of the rankings can be found here
<http://onpolitics.usatoday.com/2015/10/06/democrats-crush-republicans-in-grammar-chafee-on-top/>,
where Trump supporters, of course, rank as the most likely to break
grammatical rules.

But then, Trump has never been one
<http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/08/donald-trumpp-is-breaking-every-rule-of-political-branding>
for following rules anyway.

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they
shall never sit in.
-Greek proverb

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in
lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own
understanding!—that is the motto of enlightenment.

--Immanuel Kant
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