A study of the language used by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton supporters online shows that supporters of The Donald use more profanity a lot more than Clinton’s.
Editing software Grammarly analysed both Reddit communities for the presidential nominees looking into how commenters used punctuation, swear words and politically incorrect words, as well as their spelling, grammar and punctuation errors.
In what Grammarly described as an “unfiltered setting,” supporters of the Republican nominee used profanity 135 percent more often than Clinton’s supporters, and also used politically incorrect terms 88 percent more often.
Both “f*ck” and “sh*t” appear in the top five most used words by Trump supporters on the r/The_Donald subreddit, with “Trump," “Hillary” and “America” rounding out the list.
There is some overlap with the top five words on r/hillaryclinton, with “Trump,” “Hillary,” “Clinton,” “Republican” and “Bernie" filling out the top five in that order.
It was also found that supporters of both candidates generally write “significantly better than Facebook users.”
Based on a previous Grammarly study, Clinton’s Facebook supporters made 6.3 errors per 100 words while Trump’s were doubly as erroneous. On Reddit, however, pro-Clinton commenters made just 1.82 errors per 100 words with Trump’s following close behind at 2.10.
A total of 650,000 words across the top 100 posts between July 7 and August 4 on each subreddit were analysed by Grammarly and they found that both candidates’ supporters often used apostrophes incorrectly and were also likely to mix up words like “then” and “than” and “too” and “to.”
Both sides frequently asked the question “Who’s supporting him/her?” and that their respective rival would bring about "America’s demise."
Trump supporters were also found to use their own specific unique words, such as "Cuck" (Cuckington Post, Cuckbook) and MAGA (an acronym for "Make America Great Again” slogan), as well as "Trigglypuff."
While there are differences in how they say it, supporters of both do seem to care about the same issues with foreign policy ranked as the number one topic on the Clinton subreddit and number two for Trump.
Also discussed by both camps were the issues of crime and safety, foreign policy, national security and guns.
Immigration was the third most discussed topic on the Trump subreddit, but didn’t make Clinton’s top five, instead replaced by the economy and jobs.