The Geography of the 1992 U.S. Presidential Debates

Due to the United States' reliance upon the electoral college, its presidential elections are intrinsically geographic events. In their campaigns successful candidates must address issues of varying pertinence in different places and at different geographic scales. The three 1992 presidential debates provide an opportunity to consider the relative geographic emphases of the three presidential candidates based on their references to geographic places. This paper uses the verbatim dialogue of the 1992 presidential debates to extract place name references by each of the three candidates. Chi-square tests are applied to the relative use of foreign and domestic place names by the three candidates to determine if the differences in their geographic emphases are statistically significant. Cognitive maps of their domestic and foreign place references are also produced. The results reveal that while all three candidates stressed domestic places over foreign places, Bill Clinton's emphasis on domestic locations was greatest.