Luxon vs Hipkins leaders debate: What once was a ‘crisis’ is now a ‘challenge’

Labour's Chris Hipkins told his counterpart off for interrupting him. But he did a lot more of that himself in last night's TVNZ leaders debate.Analysis: The men arguing on stage were the same as three years earlier, but their roles in last night's TVNZ leaders debate were reversed.This time, Labour's Chris Hipkins was arguing the health system is in crisis, while National's Christopher Luxon preferred the term "challenge".The debate broadcast on TVNZ and hosted by Jack Tame covered a wide range of topics including the cost of living, health, education, tax and AI.Three years ago at the same debate, when Hipkins said the health system was not broken, Luxon said it was "quite outrageous" to suggest there was "no crisis" in healthcare. This time, it was Hipkins calling it a crisis and Luxon preferring to say the healthcare system "is challenged".Luxon used variations of the word challenge to talk about the cost of living, the health system, education, artificial intelligence and climate.While Hipkins didn't use the term "challenge" in either of the TVNZ leaders debates at the last election, he did use it five times in a similar way to Luxon last night during the Newshub debate hosted by Patrick Gower.Now in opposition, Hipkins was last night much more on the attack, frequently talking over Luxon and hammering the term "crisis". Unlike Luxon's broad use of "challenge", Hipkins honed in on the health system, repeating the term six times in relation to issues with staffing and hospitals.RNZ's data analysis of what was said shows who got the most words in, what topics were the hottest, and what the leaders said when they didn't want to give a straight answer.Who talked the most?When it came to getting more words in, Luxon won out. He said 6031 discernable words during the debate compared to Hipkins' 4270 words, which trailed even Tame.Hipkins twice chided Luxon for interrupting his answer, once even calling him "shrill". He told off Tame for interrupting him too. But Hipkins himself actually did a lot more interrupting and crosstalk, with mixed results.In total, Hipkins interrupted Luxon - causing him to stop speaking and address Hipkins' comments - seven times compared to Luxon's four. Hipkins also talked over Luxon almost twice as many times - 30 compared to 18 times Luxon talked over Hipkins.Luxon was slightly ahead of Hipkins with speaking turns, with 142 turns, 10 more than Hipkins 132. A 'speaking turn' is counted as each time six words or more were spoken in a row by one of the leaders.Both Luxon's and Hipkins' longest answers were their introductory remarks, with Luxon using 225 words and Hipkins 190.Luxon's second-longest answer defended the Investment Boost tax incentive, while Hipkins' was about the moment he felt proudest of New Zealand - the response to the March 15 terror attack.Luxon's answers averaged 32 words, while Hipkins' were shorter, at 24 words.What was saidThere were words the leaders said over and over again. Luxon said "actually" 68 times during the debate, "well" 47 times and "Chris" 37 times. None of those were in Hipkins' most-used list, he referred to his counterpart "Christopher" eight times and had "going", "yes" and "government" at the top.RNZ counted how many times each leader used certain words which relate to key topics. The most mentioned topic was schools, followed by the economy and tax. Luxon led off Hipkins on all three by the sheer volume of mentioning these hot topics.A clear, and perhaps predictable, divide between the two opened up over how they described the state of things in some key areas. Whereas Luxon used "challenge" and variations of this word was frequently (10 times), Hipkins used "crisis" six times when discussing the health system.In a tactic that earned a telling off from Tame, both leaders levelled accusations of "not true" at each other's statements, with Luxon saying it four times and Hipkins three. Luxon also got in a chorus of four "unfunded" allegations against Hipkins.Campaign slogans like "fixing the basics" and "better starts now" weren't used, but "no new taxes" was used twice by Luxon, and "nine new taxes" once.Dodging the hard questionsA common tactic to avoid answering a question is to use what's referred to as a 'block and bridge'. The politician acknowledges the question using a 'block' and then uses a 'bridge' phrase to move the topic to something they are more comfortable with. Common bridging terms are "I would say", "what I can tell you", "the reality is". The bridge allows them to transition the conversation to their own talking points.Luxon used variations of the term "as I said" five times during the debate. His next most used term was "want to make sure", which was also used by Hipkins.What was the vibe?According to a language sentiment data dictionary, which rates words as either positive, neutral or negative, Luxon used a slightly higher percentage of positive words and lower percentage of negative words than Hipkins during the debate.How we analysed the data: The debate was transcribed by Otter.ai and then manually cleaned to improve accuracy. Cross-talk - where debate participants spoke over each other was removed where words were unintelligible. Interjections when intelligible were included. Text was analysed using R and the Quanteda package.