Word clouds illustrate opposing views on health care reform

Nate Silver – the guy who uses numbers to predict things like who will win Presidential elections or Oscars – has generated some nifty images using the building blocks of the health care debate: words.

Gallup pollsters asked people why they favored or opposed health care reform, and Gallup released the words – all of them – that respondents used.

Nate Silver took these words and turned them into “word clouds” (the more a word is used, the bigger it appears).

This is the word cloud created using the words from supporters of health care reform:

For Silver, the words that stood out were “people,” “need” and “insurance.”

Here’s the word cloud he made using words from people opposed to health care reform:

Silver says “government” and “cost” predominantly conveyed this group’s distaste for the bill.

Follow this link to Silver’s web site and his analysis of these images.