Obama Acceptance Speech, Charlotte

Again this year We planned a formal analysis of the Presidential acceptance speeches, as part of a series of replications of political events that, while US-centric, nevertheless interest huge numbers of people around the world.

Obama's speech began well after the appointed time (10 pm in Charlotte, North Carolina). The GCP event was set for a two hour period that would definitely include all of the Obama address, as well as a bit of the prelude and introduction and probably at least half an hour of aftermath.

The result is a negative trend, with Chisquare 7076.36 on 7200 df, for p = 0.849 and Z = -1.031. The graph shows a fairly consistent trend, beginning at 10 pm, local time in Charlotte, before the speech began and leveling off sometime during the speech.

Obama
Acceptance Speech, Charlotte

It is important to keep in mind that we have only a tiny statistical effect, so that it is always hard to distinguish signal from noise. This means that every "success" might be largely driven by chance, and every "null" might include a real signal overwhelmed by noise. In the long run, a real effect can be identified only by patiently accumulating replications of similar analyses.


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