Analysis of the average lengths of State of the Union addresses given by each president (n.b. neither William Henry Harrison nor James A. Garfield ever gave an SOU address).

This is really just an experiment in using charts in D3. It isn't especially helpful to see these lengths without some knowledge of the various circumstances surrounding the evolution of the State of the Union over time, and whether each was delivered orally or in writing. Some presidents choose to give a final written address just before leaving office, and these naturally tend to be a bit verbose—Carter is the most recent president to do this, which is why his bar seems so long.

Rudimentary text parsing was done in Python. Text of each SOU and additional information from American Presidency Project.