McCain Acceptance Speech, Denver

To provide a balance and comparison to the culminating event of the Democratic National Convention, we also looked at the corresponding moment at the Republican National Convention, John McCain's speech formally accepting the party nomination.

We set a formal analysis using the same parameters applied to the Obama address the previous week. Both speeches are part of a developing series of replications of political events that, while US-centric, nevertheless interests huge numbers of people around the world.

I do not have the exact time McCains's speech began, nor could I find authoritative timing via Google, but it was somewhat after the appointed time (9 pm in St. Paul, Minnesota). The GCP event was set for a two hour period that would definitely include all of the McCain address, as well as a bit of the prelude and introduction and probably at least half an hour of aftermath.

The result is a null outcome, with Chisquare 7197.70 on 7200 df, for p = 0.505 and Z = -0.014. The graph shows a downward trend for much of the time, but beginning at about 10:30 the deviation turns positive and returns the composite to near zero deviation.

McCain
Acceptance Speech, St Paul

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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