Donald Trump Talks to Voters Like They’re All Fourth-Graders… Literally

A review of the major Republican and Democratic presidential candidates’ campaign announcements determined that Donald Trump used language that a fourth-grader could understand.

According to Boston Globe, the New York real estate mogul’s linguistic preferences mirror those of Ohio Governor John Kasich, who also generally uses language at a fourth-grade reading level. However, unlike Kasich’s 4.7 rating, Trump’s language earned the candidate the lowest number of them all — 4.1

Using the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, an algorithm that grades language accessibility via word choice and sentence structure, the Boston Globe‘s Matt Viser determined that Trump’s speeches — planned and otherwise — put the Republican front-runner squarely at the bottom of the ranking. Of the other 14 Republican candidates, including Kasich, half fell below an eighth-grade reading level and half rose above it.

As for the Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley were tied for the lowest rung at 7.7, whereas Bernie Sanders attained a rate of 10.1.

However, as Viser notes, Trump’s insistence on using words and syntax understood at a lower grade level makes his speeches — however rambling they might be — accessible to the greatest number of potential voters possible.

[h/t Boston Globe]
[Image via screengrab]

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