Press Coverage on ABC: Presidential Debate Decoder: Obama Out-Zingered Romney

Wonderful article on ABC.com about our debate analytics. Link to full article here

“President Obama out-zingered Mitt Romney in their final presidential debate by 3 to 1, according to communications analysis firm Quantified Communications.

Obama deployed what researchers described as “pointed, purposeful, aggressive commentary” for a total of 240 seconds to Romney’s 80 seconds throughout the foreign policy debate at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., Monday night.

“We were looking at pointed and purposeful aggressive commentary,” Briar Goldberg, the Austin, Texas-based firm’s lead presentation reviewer, said. “Commentary from either candidate was technically meant to be a sound bite the next morning. Obama spent more time doing that.”

Using a methodology developed at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, Quantified Communications’ analysts measured the candidate’s performance on this and 27 other metrics of effective communication.

From the pace of speech, to the degree of complexity, analysts said that by the end of the series of three debates, both candidates had reached a peak in their communication skills.

“Both of the candidates, their scores were so high that they were both effectively communicating with their audience,” Quantified Communications president Noah Zandan said. “It’s really a measurement of style as much as content because people are going to hear the content that they want to hear.'”