When President Barack Obama gives his fifth State of the Union address Tuesday night, he is likely to utter the word “jobs” a lot. A breakdown of Obama’s 50 most frequently used words in his past four speeches (excluding words such as “Americans,” “United States” and “year,” among others) indicates that employment is his most talked-about topic. Other topics such as business and energy are also frequently mentioned, but “health care,” the subject of Obama’s signature piece of legislation, doesn’t make the cut.
Mentions of different topics have fluctuated over the years. Most notably, the word “gun” did not appear at all in Obama’s State of the Union speeches until 2013, when the president stressed gun control two months after the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., in which 26 people were killed. The following graph illustrates how many times some hot-button words have appeared in the past four speeches.
