Politician's rhetoric and words are driven by electoral concerns rather than by the real world circumstances and concerns of their constitutants.

From Fairness vs. Freedom: Is Politics Going Back to the 1970s? by Nate Silver. Independent of the points he is trying to make in the article, I found this graphic very interesting.

Compare this to Ngram Viewer for the relative discussions of Freedom, Liberty, Fairness, Equality and Income Inequality.


Freedom is a dominant theme by several factors, followed by an equal interest in Liberty and Equality. Fairness is a distant, distant fourth and Income Inequality is a virtual no-show.

The thing that stands out to me among these terms is their relative stability. Other than that the term Freedom appears to be displacing the term Liberty (there is a two century displacement of one for the other), the level of discussion around the concepts seems very stable over the decades.

Casting these phrases in economic terms, look at the results for Opportunity, Taxes, Inflation, Economic Growth, Income Inequality.


The clear and stable winner is a focus on Opportunity by several factors. Concern (or at least discussion) about Taxes peaked in the late 1930s (after income taxes were implemented) and has been gently falling since then. Also pretty stable. Inflation is in third place but off an early 1980s peak (when inflation was high). In fourth place, concern about Economic Growth is pretty stable since 1970. Again, in fifth place, interest in Income Inequality is close to non-existent. Likewise if you search on Equal Opportunity.

The point in comparing these Ngram Viewer results with those of the party political rhetoric that Silver captures is to see if they are correlated in any systemic fashion. More to the point, does political rhetoric change based on exogenous factors (such as increasing income inequality, or outsourcing, or globalization or economic growth, etc.?

At the macro level, there appears to be little correlation. The things politicians say and express concern about appear to be driven by branding, competitive dynamics and other considerations rather than to be the result of real world circumstances. Not particularly surprising, but it is useful to have it documented.

Politician's rhetoric and words are driven by electoral concerns rather than by the real world circumstances and concerns of their constituents.