Inaugural Addresses
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Transcript of Inaugural Addresses
Number of words in George Washington’s
second inaugural address, the shortest in history
135Number of words in
William Henry Harrison’s inaugural address, the
longest in history
8,460
Number of presidents who gave more than one
inaugural speech
Number of inaugural speeches given by
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Democrats & Republicans Breaking it down by party a�iliation, you can see that the two most prominent U.S. political parties of the modern era have given almost the exact same number of speeches.
One small di�erence? Republicans tend to be slightly more wordy—at a median of about 2,400 words per speech compared to the Democrats’ 1,700.
The Flesch-Kincaid grade score is used to determine the“readability” of a passage. The lower the grade score, theeasier it is to understand. Recent speeches have trendedaround a 10th grade reading level, which means most 10thgraders would understand the speech. Here, you can see that the grade score for inaugural addresses decreased steadily from 1789 until the 1930’s. From that point until today, it has remained relatively stable. So, presidents are making their speeches more colloquial and concise.
Reading Level Across Time
George Washington* and John Adams tie for “most di�icult to
understand” speech. Their talks were aimed
at college graduates and above.
*first term
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Federalist1
INAUGURALADDRESSESWe looked at the data. Here’s a breakdown of some key statistics about the nation’s incoming presidents’ addresses, how long they spoke, how well, and more.
Number of inaugural addresses
57
174
Inaugural Speeches are Trending Easier to Read
Fles
ch-K
inca
id G
rade
Leve
l
Year
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
17891797180518131821182918371845185318611869187718851893190119091917192519331941194919571965197319811989199720052013
Presidents who’ve given inaugural addresses
38
Republican23
Whig2
None2
Democrat22
Democratic-Republican
7