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Debate Word Clouds: Your One-Word Reax

As the candidates left the stage in Denver, we asked our readers to give one-word reviews. Here are the resulting word clouds—see who’s a “liar” and who was “lackluster.”

Just moments after Mitt Romney and Barack Obama left the stage following Wednesday night's presidential debate, we polled our readers on Facebook to tell us one word that summed up each of the candidates' performances.

We then took a list of the responses in each of our threads and created two word clouds, which demonstrate the most-mentioned words by relative size (the bigger the word, the more it was posted in the thread).

Romney responses came in at 1,638 comments. The most common one-word reaction? Liar. The reactions close behind included "bully," "smug," aggressive," and yes, "presidential"—a word Team Mitt would surely like to hear.

debate-reaction-romney-word-cloud-schlinkert

Meanwhile, over on Obama's thread, the 1,189 submissions were equally as damning. The biggest word in the word cloud, and most popular comment judging Obama's debate performance, is "lackluster." Runners-up for the president include “disappointing,” “weak,” “tired,” and “lost.”

debate-reaction-obama-word-cloud-schlinkert

Did you miss your chance to take part on Facebook? Try your hand at it in the comments and answer this question: What's one word that sums up Mitt Romney's performance, and one word that sums up Obama’s? 

 

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