Before rushing like fools and assaulting the dataset with a plethora of fancy data analysis tools, let’s just take a step back and travel back in time throughout the whole period during which the statements were made. As it was mentioned in the introduction, this period ranges from 2007 up until 2016. While this is nowhere near being some obscure ancient history subject which we studied at school years ago, a quick refresher will surely be a sensible thing to do in order to set everything in context. Our time travel machine will be the word cloud map of the USA on the right. Not the fanciest machine but, eh, it’s taking us where we want, right? Unlike politicians… Without further ado, let’s hop on the word cloud and go !

Some of the words that pop out the most are Barack Obama and health care. It’s no wonder since Obama was president during most of the period 2007-2016 and health care was one of his greatest fights. During his two terms in the oval office, Barack Obama, being at the head of the country, was the target of much criticism, both positive and negative, and was in this sense a hot topic by himself. Specifically in the domain of health care, as he managed to set in place what was called ObamaCare, a health care reform whose goal was to enlarge the population of Americans covered by insurance. As this was closely related to taxes and to the debate of a strong vs weak government, it was a highly controversial subject and caused a lot of ink to flow.

Finally, we'll focus on some of the smaller words. First of all, it must be reminded that, in 2008, one of the biggest financial crisis ever initiated in the U.S.. It plunged the world into a global recession and was the most important topic for some time. This is illustrated by numerous words like job, money, taxes, unemployment, debt and so on. Secondly, as the statements are all about american politics, we can find some of their favorite topics, such as gun or abortion. Third, we can find some less prominent american politicians like (Mitt Romney (who ran for president against Barack Obama in 2012), Rick Perry (former Governor of Texas) and Scott Walker (Governor of Wisconsin)).

Most important topics for the parties

The Venn diagram compares the twenty subjects most frequently addressed by Democrats and Republicans respectively. Naturally, most subjects are of high interest to both parties, but there are some distinguishments. The military, terrorism, and workers appears to be of higher importance to the Democrats, while abortions, job accomplishments, and criminal justice are more often discussed by the Republicans. Some of these subjects represent quite controversial issues, where the Democrats and Republicans take different stands. The following are some broadly generalized opinions, and it should be noted that there are naturally many politicians within each party who have different and more nuanced positions on these issues.

While Republicans prefer increasing military spending, and have a higher tendency to employ the military option, Democrats prefer lower increases in military spending, and are comparatively more reluctant to use military force.

In general, Democrats support abortion rights and want to keep elective criminal justice legal. Republicans, on the other hand, believe abortions should not be legal.

Whereas Democrats favor increase in the minimum wage to help workers, Republicans oppose raising the minimum wage because it would hurt businesses.

The main players of the game

We want to take a closer look at politicians with the highest number of pants-on-fire and false statements. The circle-shaped graph shows the relationship between them. Each arc represent a lie made by one speaker (the source) about another speaker (the target). The four main players are Barack Obama (Democrat), Donald Trump (Republican), Hillary Clinton (Democrat), and Mitt Romney (Republican). These are names we know well. Barack Obama, former President of the U.S., ran against Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election; Donald Trump, current President of the U.S., ran against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

It's interesting to observe that the majority of Donald Trumps' lies is directed towards Hillary Clinton, his opposing candidate, and that there are more than twice as many lies going in this direction, than the other way around. However, it should be noted that the majority of Clinton's lies, although less in numbers, are also directed towards her opposing candidate, Trump. This is perhaps to be expected, as politicians are known to demonize their opponents, especially with upcoming elections. The same pattern is observable with regard to Mitt Romney; most of his lies are discussing Barack Obama. Obama's lies, however, are more evenly distributed, and compared to how many lies he's the target of, he hasn't really contributed with that many himself. It's natural that he's the subject of most of the lies, as he was the sitting President for almost the entire time frame of the statements.

Politics: the kindergarten for old people

To top up our comparison between Democrats and Republicans, we will look at the graphs on the left. The one at the top shows the interactions, more specifically the lies, between the parties and the two at the bottom do the same but within each party. Even if it is somewhat predictable, it is striking how many arrows are going between the Democrats and the Republicans while there is almost nothing happening inside of each party. This seems to suggest that politics is more about childish finger-pointing of the opponents rather than meaningful and educated debates.