I Am Senator, Hear Me Talk
If you had the impression that the Senators did most of the talking in the second day of Judge Alito’s confirmation hearings, you were right. Of the 15 Senators who participated in the questioning today, 13 talked more than Alito. Not surprisingly, Senator Biden was the most verbose, but he was not without some close competitors.
I analyzed the Washington Post transcript to determine which Senators talked the most in their allotted 30 minutes. The percentage listed is the percent of the words in the Senator’s questions and Alito’s responses that are spoken by the Senator.
Senator Cornyn 76.8% (Cornyn 3262, Alito 984)
Senator Schumer 74.9% (Schumer 3472, Alito 1165)
Senator DeWine 72.0% (DeWine 3370, Alito 1310)
Senator Kennedy 67.1% (Kennedy 3271, Alito 1605)
Senator Graham 61.6% (Graham 2796, Alito 1745)
Senator Leahy 58.0% (Leahy 2622, Alito 1900)
Senator Sessions 57.3% (Sessions 2591, Alito 1934)
Senator Feingold 55.7% (Feingold 2947, Alito 2342)
Senator Hatch 54.0% (Hatch 2616, Alito 2227)
Senator Kyl 52.9% (Kyl 2517, Alito 2244)
Senator Grassley 51.3% (Grassley 2275, Alito 2160)
Senator Specter 50.7% (Specter 2229, Alito 2164)
Senator Feinstein 41.8% (Feinstein 1823, Alito 2541)
Senator Kohl 37.1% (Kohl 1812, Alito 3076)
posted by Sisyphus at 1/10/2006 11:53:00 PM
3 Comments:
I think you meant the ratio of the senator's words to the total words spoken. That is:
Biden/(Biden + Alito)
Anything over 50% means that the Senator spoke more than Alito.
From what I've read elsewhere Biden spoke about 3 words for every word uttered by the Judge. That would square with your number.
Yes George, that is what I meant. I have reworded the post to clairfy this. I have also added the actual word counts (found using the wordcount feature of MS Word on the transcript).
"Yes George, that is what I meant. I have reworded the post to clairfy this. I have also added the actual word counts (found using the wordcount feature of MS Word on the transcript)."
That's good, Sisyphus. For a minute there I thought you just had wayyy too much time on your hands :)
-Leo-
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