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To provide a balance and comparison to the culminating event of
the Democratic National Convention, we also looked at the
corresponding moment at the Republican National Convention,
John McCain's speech formally accepting the party nomination.
We set a formal analysis using the same parameters applied
to the
Obama address the previous week. Both speeches are part of a
developing series of replications of political events that,
while US-centric, nevertheless interests huge numbers of
people around the world.
I do not have the exact time McCains's speech began, nor
could I find authoritative timing via Google, but it
was somewhat after the appointed time (9 pm in
St. Paul, Minnesota). The GCP event was set for a two hour period that
would definitely include all of the McCain address, as well as a bit of
the prelude and introduction and probably at least half an
hour of aftermath.
The result is a null outcome, with
Chisquare 7197.70 on 7200 df, for p = 0.505 and Z = -0.014.
The graph shows a downward trend for much of the time, but
beginning at about 10:30 the deviation turns positive and
returns the composite to near zero deviation.
It is important to keep in mind that we have only a tiny statistical
effect, so that it is always hard to distinguish signal from
noise. This means that every "success" might be largely
driven by chance, and every "null" might include a real
signal overwhelmed by noise. In the long run, a real effect can
be identified only by patiently accumulating replications of similar analyses.
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