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