Trump speaks at a seventh-grade level - here's how other politicians compare

Advertisement

Donald Trump

Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images

Donald Trump.

If you've noticed that Donald Trump's speech sounds short and simple, you're not alone.

Advertisement

A new report from Quote.com has found that the Republican presidential nominee speaks at a seventh-grade level - lower than many of his political peers.

Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, delivers speeches at an eighth-grade level, the authors found.

The report analyzed about 4,000 words per person of public speeches from prominent public figures over the past two years. The authors ran the speeches through six different text-analysis algorithms and averaged the results to calculate the final score for each person. When comparing Trump and Clinton, however, the authors added two algorithms.

The assessment may actually suggest an improvement for Trump. Similar analyses of Trump's speech from earlier in the campaign season found the businessman spoke at a fourth- or fifth-grade level.

Advertisement

trump clinton reading level

Quote.com

But as the authors of the report note, eloquence is not necessarily an indicator of intelligence. Trump's score puts him in the same company as Oprah Winfrey, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Vice President Joe Biden.

For comparison, Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is scored at an 11th-grade reading level, according to The Boston Globe, while Ernest Hemingway wrote at a level a fourth-grader can understand.

Among this election's crop of presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders ranked highest of those analyzed, checking in at a ninth-grade level. Marco Rubio was close behind, averaging between eighth and ninth grade. President Barack Obama was found to speak at just under an eighth-grade level, averaging a 7.9.

Former President George W. Bush, for all his rhetorical shortcomings, scored a reading level grade of 8.7 - the second highest among politicians analyzed.

Here's the full breakdown:

politicians reading level

Quote.com

Advertisement

Read the full Quote.com report here »

NOW WATCH: This animated map shows the most probable path to a Trump victory