The arithmetic for one report
Why did voters (finally) hand Trump a historic defeat?
78Moderate density of flagged expressions
What was read
1102 words in the outlet's own voice, plus 9 in the headline. 2% of the text is in quotes, with 1 listed word inside quotes. 2 attribution markers (such as "said" or "according to") found.
Listed words inside quotes (not scored; quoting is reporting, but which quotes to use is an editorial choice): destroyed
.
Scare quotes (a phrase of one to three words in quotation marks with no speaker in the same sentence): blue tsunami
, the economy, stupid.
. Since method 3.1.0 their words count as the outlet's own.
Words found
- Word choice:
legendary
1 point Puffery
answer is, to quote the legendary Democratic consultant James Carville, the economy,stupid
2 points Editorializing
consultant James Carville, the economy, stupid . As 2016 made clear, the Americanof course
2 points Editorializing
been in nearly two decades. ( Of course , 2020 would bring economic upheaval, butof course
2 points Editorializing
candidacy in 2015 . And of course , he incited an insurrectionary riot on - Raises the temperature:
rebuke
experimental, shown but not counted Raises the temperature
manage to provoke an epochal rebuke from American voters in 2026, butrebuke
experimental, shown but not counted Raises the temperature
suffered a much smaller midterm rebuke , it was over 7 percent. Ourmassively
1 point Raises the temperature
Tuesday night, Latino counties swung massively against Republicans. Meanwhile, Trump’s willingness todeeply
1 point Raises the temperature
elected officials are overwhelmingly from deeply pro-Trump jurisdictions. And unlike George W.
Layer scores
Rates are counted points per 1,000 words of the story's own text. For a story longer than 200 words, the rate used is the average of the whole-story rate and the rate in its densest 200-word stretch, so neutral filler cannot dilute a loaded passage away. Score = 100 × (loaded end − rate used) ÷ loaded end, kept between 0 and 100. Headline words count only in the headline layer.
| Layer | Points | Words | Whole-story rate | Densest 200 words | Rate used | Scale | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Word choice | 7 | 1102 | 6.4 | 25.0 (words 301 to 500) | 15.7 | 0 to 40 | 61 |
| Temperature | 2 | 1102 | 1.8 | 10.0 (words 851 to 1050) | 5.9 | 0 to 40 | 85 |
| Flagged attribution phrases | 0 | 1102 | 0.0 | 0.0 (words 1 to 200) | 0.0 | 0 to 20 | 100 |
| Headline wording | 0 | 25 | 0.0 | headline only | 0.0 | 0 to 240 | 100 |
Densest stretch: Word choice, words 301 to 500 of 1102, with legendary
, stupid
, of course
; Temperature, words 851 to 1050 of 1102, with massively
, deeply
.
Shown, not scored: the headline's rate minus the rate of the story's first 80 words is 0.0 points per 1,000 words.
Overall
Weighted geometric mean of the layers that are established, with 10 added to each layer first and taken away at the end: (Word choice 61 + 10)0.4 × (Temperature 85 + 10)0.3 × (Flagged attribution phrases 100 + 10)0.2 × (Headline wording 100 + 10)0.1 − 10 = 78. Adding 10 means one layer at 0 lowers the total steeply without collapsing it. A weak layer pulls the total down.
Lowered the score most: Word choice.
Name-swap test: with party, politician and institution names swapped, this report's score moves by 0.0 points.
What a reader could check
| People named as sources | 0 |
|---|---|
| Unnamed sources | 0 |
| Links to primary records (government, court, filings, PDFs) | 2 www.bls.gov, archive.ph |
| Documents cited in the text (a report, bill, ruling, filing) | 0 |
| Checkable specifics (numbers and dates) | 28 |
| Data shown (a table or chart) | no |
| Correction or clarification noted | no |
What a reader could check, counted by published patterns. Shown beside the score, never part of it. How each count works
Checked against the official record
No vote count or bill number found in the text read.
Record of this measurement
Method 3.1.0, word-list fingerprint 807a17189402a416, read by text extractor version 4. Fingerprint of the text read: d31d244cdc6ea58a. Internet Archive copy nearest the time it was read. The text read was not kept (read before method 3.1.0, or from the feed only), so a later rule change can be applied only while the report is still in the outlet's feed.