Study: Democrats are much better at grammar than Republicans
Presidential elections become more digitally oriented every year, with debates and conversations about the 2016 campaign occurring on almost every social media platform. As such, it's inevitable that some supporters will happen to be better spoken than others. To find out which candidate has the most grammatically correct supporters, the app Grammarly conducted a study on Democratic and Republican candidates' Facebook pages — and it turns out that Republican commenters get the red squiggly underline more than twice as often as Democrats do.
Grammarly sampled comments of 15 or more words on candidates' official Facebook pages between April and August 2015. The team then looked specifically at positive or neutral comments and ran grammar tests using both Grammarly and live proofreaders. For the purpose of the study, Grammarly only counted misspellings, wrong or missing punctuation, misused or missing words, and subject-verb disagreement, letting slang words, serial commas, and miswritten numerals slide.
With that, the results were in: Democrats made 4.2 mistakes per 100 words, while Republicans, at 8.7, made over double that. What's more, Lincoln Chafee, an underdog in the Democratic primary, had the most grammatically knowledgeable fans — they only made 3.1 mistakes for every 100 words. Hillary Clinton had the least grammatically correct supporters of all of the Democratic candidates, with commenters clocking 6.3 mistakes per 100 words — the same number as the best-spoken Republican supporters, who rallied in a grammatically correct fashion behind Carly Fiorina.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
But not everyone can be winners: Way down at the bottom of the list was Donald Trump, whose supporters made a whopping 12.6 errors for every 100 words they wrote.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.
-
Honda and Nissan in merger talks
Speed Read The companies are currently Japan's second and third-biggest automakers, respectively
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Taylor Swift wraps up record-shattering Eras tour
Speed Read The pop star finally ended her long-running tour in Vancouver, Canada
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Drake claims illegal boosting, defamation
Speed Read The rapper accused Universal Music of boosting Kendrick Lamar's diss track and said UMG allowed him to be falsely accused of pedophilia
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
'Wicked' and 'Gladiator II' ignite holiday box office
Speed Read The combination of the two movies revitalized a struggling box office
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Jussie Smollet conviction overturned on appeal
Speed Read The Illinois Supreme Court overturned the actor's conviction on charges of staging a racist and homophobic attack against himself in 2019
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Quincy Jones, music icon, is dead at 91
Speed Read The legendary producer is perhaps best known as the architect behind Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
OJ Simpson, star athlete tried for murder, dead at 76
Speed Read The former football hero and murder suspect lost his battle with cancer
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
Momofuku's 'Chili Crunch' trademark uproar
Speed Read The company's attempt to own the sole rights has prompted backlash
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published