Trump speaks at a 7th-grade level — here's how other politicians compare
(Donald Trump.Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images)
If you've noticed that Donald Trump's speech sounds short and simple, then you're not alone.
A new report from Quote.com has found that the Republican presidential nominee speaks at a seventh-grade level — lower than many of his political peers.
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, delivers speeches at an eighth-grade level, the authors found.
The report analyzed about 4,000 words per person of public speeches from prominent public figures over the past two years. The authors ran the speeches through six different text-analysis algorithms and averaged the results to calculate the final score for each person. When comparing Trump and Clinton, however, the authors added two algorithms.
The assessment may actually suggest an improvement for Trump. Similar analyses of Trump's speech from earlier in the campaign season found that the businessman spoke at a fourth- or fifth-grade level.
(Quote.com)
But as the authors of the report note, eloquence is not necessarily an indicator of intelligence. Trump's score puts him in the same company as Oprah Winfrey, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Vice President Joe Biden.
For comparison, Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is scored at an 11th-grade reading level, according to The Boston Globe, while Ernest Hemingway wrote at a level that a fourth-grader can understand.
Among this election's crop of presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders ranked highest of those analyzed, checking in at a ninth-grade level. Marco Rubio was close behind, averaging between eighth- and ninth-grade. President Barack Obama was found to speak at just under an eighth-grade level, averaging a 7.9.
Former President George W. Bush, for all his rhetorical shortcomings, scored a reading level grade of 8.7 — the second-highest among politicians analyzed.
Here's the full breakdown:
(Quote.com)
Read the full Quote.com report here »
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