I watched the Democratic debate on Thursday night in a resolutely non-political way:  with the sound turned off.  The point was to watch the candidates’ body language to see how they showed up.  I did turn on the sound briefly for each candidate’s final pitch, in order to check their voices, since vocal quality is an important part of body language cues.  We unconsciously register health, fitness, and overall well-being, as well as subtler cues like authority, confidence, and power, through vocal tones.  So I wanted to hear how the candidates sounded near the end of the debate, when they’d be over any initial nervousness and settled in to their usual vocal routines on the campaign trail – or as close to that as possible.

What follows, then, is an analysis of how each candidate stacks up solely on these body language (and vocal quality) terms.  They’re listed in order of who spoke first.  I’d welcome your reactions, but please don’t make political comments.  This blog is about the art and science of communications, not about politics.

Julian Castro

Castro’s body language is poised and smooth.  His smile is a mask – it doesn’t reach his eyes.  It’s a politician’s smile.  His voice is quite strong and authoritative.  His weakest point is that he has a slight upturn to his chin – and we register that as someone who is pretending to be more in command than he actually is.  A punk’s chin, in short – or at least someone who knows he’s not as much of a player as the others on stage.

Amy Klobuchar

Klobuchar’s smile rarely leaves her face, and combined with narrowed eyes, it’s particularly mask-like.  She’s not enjoying herself.  Her gestures come and go very quickly, suggesting that she is similarly masking her emotions and only letting them out for brief instants, then shutting back down.  As a result, we don’t connect powerfully with her because she’s not open long enough.

Beto O’Rourke

O’Rourke is the master of suggesting vulnerability.  His stance is askew, unbalanced, more on one leg than the other, and typically leaning one way or the other.  Similarly, his posture is that of a tall man bending over to seem more average in height.  The result is not particularly authoritative.  He’s open and emotional without being strong — the Texan Hamlet.

Cory Booker

Booker’s expression of intense listening makes him look a little too intense.  His eyebrows are drawn down, with open eyes – a combination of openness and concentration that seems overdone and makes him appear a bit worried.  His gestures are strong, commanding, and authoritative, but it’s as if he’s aware that no one is listening.  He’s like the person who is content to stand in the corner at the cocktail party and listen hard, only speaking when someone approaches him and asks him a question.

Andrew Yang

Yang’s gestural language suggests that he’s trying to put out fires and manage problems rather than inflate them or engage the audience – a classic CEO problem.  As a result, the gestures seem dismissive rather than open and inclusive.  And we see very little reaction in his face – it remains impassive.  So the net effect is an appeal to intellect rather than emotion.  Working against this is a voice that is pitched too high and too loud, and as a result sounds strained and tense.

Pete Buttigieg

We rarely see Buttigieg’s hands – they are usually held low or just reaching chest height.  Since he’s short in stature, that puts his hands at or below the top of the podium far too often.  The net effect suggests an intellectual approach, similar to Yang’s.  Buttigieg’s hands are tamping down emotions, and holding the audience at bay, not engaging them.  This conveys an analytical attitude toward his politics.  Set against that, his face is open and sympathetic, displaying sorrow and empathy more often than humor.  The result is like a mourner at a funeral who didn’t know the departed well enough to be brokenhearted but just enough to be politely sad.

Kamala Harris

Harris surprisingly gives up her authority in a variety of ways – I say surprisingly because she’s a former prosecutor.  She’s usually tilting her head to the left or right, and her gestures come and go too quickly to be taken as powerful.  They are open, but not authoritative.  But Harris’ worst feature is her voice.  It’s whiny and nasal and lacks authority.  She sounds like a teenager complaining because she doesn’t have a seat at the grownup table at Thanksgiving.  Set against that, perhaps, is her ready smile – she looks like she’s having more fun than any other candidate on stage.

Bernie Sanders

Sanders is a grumpy old man, hectoring the crowd with that endless admonishing forefinger.  He has one dominant facial expression:  fury.  He looks unbalanced because his gestures are asymmetrical.  His head is pitched forward, suggesting that he’s used to offering his opinion without expecting anyone to act on it.  His worst feature, like Harris’, is his voice, which was even hoarser than usual Thursday night, yet still pitched too high, and generally consistent with the attitude of the ranter who has been yelling for a long time without any discernible effect on his audience.  If he was your relative, you would have stopped listening to him years ago.

Elizabeth Warren

Warren’s entire body language repertoire is built around building agreement and consensus with her views.  Unlike Sanders, she expects to win you over to her point of view eventually.  She’ll wear you down in a genial, non-threatening way.  She nods constantly, which typically causes audiences to nod back, thus building agreement.  She smiles a lot.  In contrast with these indicators, her voiced is pitch high enough to display urgency and tension, so she’s suggesting she won’t wait forever to get you on board.  Her hand gestures are often finger-pointing rants, like Sanders, but unlike Sanders she varies that with more open, symmetrical gesturing with both hands.  As a result, she doesn’t come across as grumpy or unreasonable as Sanders. Of all the candidates, she’s the one who has strengthened her performance the most since the last debate.  She’s actually starting to think she might win the nomination.

Joe Biden

Angry Biden showed up on Thursday night, but it’s a kind of elegiac anger – more sorrowful than indignant.  His posture is magnificent, ramrod straight and still – he’s used to positions of power.  His head only pitches forward when he finishes his statements, or he thinks the camera is not on him.  Unlike everyone else on stage, he’s actually been in a position of authority almost as significant as the office he’s running for and it shows.  His voice is pitched at an authoritative tone, except when he allows the anger really to come out.  His gestures are more symmetrical and balanced than asymmetrical, so he sends out messages of openness, calm, and confidence when he isn’t just being angry.  That anger doesn’t really suit him, in my opinion – he looks more himself when he’s smiling.  But because he switched on the anger so often Thursday night, the result seemed a little off – as if you never knew whether you were going to get the smile or the frown, and it was a bit arbitrary whether one or the other would show up.  Overall, I don’t think Angry Biden will win the election.  It’s not enough of a contrast with the incumbent’s mastery of anger as a debating weapon.

Finally, what was interesting about the collective body language of all the candidates on stage was how hard they listened to each other, and how essentially respectful the listening was.  These are people who for the most part agree with one another and like each other.  The sparring is put on for the cameras – and to win the nomination.