Chafee leads pack when it comes to supporters’ grammar

PROVIDENCE – A new analysis ranks presidential candidates by their supporters’ grammar, and Lincoln D. Chafee leads the pack.
“While I sometimes must sacrifice my grammar for the tweet, I’m glad my supporters don’t on Facebook!” Chafee wrote in an email.
Grammarly, an online grammar and spell checker, said it visited each candidate’s official Facebook page and reviewed comments to see how their supporters communicate their ideas in writing. And it said it did it “with a light heart and heavy-hitting algorithms.”
The result is the “Presidential Debate Grammar Power Rankings,” showing that supporters of Democrats make 4.2 mistakes per 100 words compared with 8.7 mistakes per 100 words for Republicans.
Democrat supporters also apparently have a better vocabulary, as they are using more unique words than Republican supporters – 300 per 1,000 words compared with 245 per 1,000 words. Democrat supporters also are writing more words per comment, 41.8 versus 32.4, Grammarly said.
Chafee’s supporters made 3.1 mistakes per 100 words. That compares to No. 2 Jim Webb with 3.4, No. 3 Bernie Sanders with 3.7 and No. 5 Hillary Clinton with 6.3. Carly Fiorina was the top-ranked Republican, as her supporters also made 6.3. Republican Donald Trump came in last on the list, as his supporters made 12.6 mistakes per 100 words.

According to Grammarly, rankings are based on a minimum of 180 Facebook comments made by supporters on each candidate’s Facebook page between April and August. Comments had to have at least 15 words or more to be considered, and had to be obviously positive or neutral.
Grammarly said the comments were selected at random, studied for misspellings, wrong and missing punctuation, misused or missing words, and subject-verb disagreement.
While Chafee, the former Rhode Island governor who has languished in the polls at zero percent, came out on top, he also has among the fewest Facebook likes at 9,820. Webb has even fewer, at 1,504. Sanders, in comparison, has more than 2 million, Clinton, 1.4 million. Trump has 3.9 million.

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