Politi-Score: Elections 2010 Part Two

Data Analysis of Organizations, Bloggers and Chain e-Mails

Imagine this conversation in a Bill Adair PolitiFact Staff meeting circa late August this year: “Now this is how I want our rulings to work on anyone other than the candidates for the upcoming campaign season….they should be about 20 percent of all rulings..and try to keep it equal between the Republicans and Democrats if you can. Overall, they should probably be less truthful than the candidates, so don’t be surprised if you have a lot of Pants on Fire……hmmm…. maybe 3/8 False and Pants on Fire, about half in the middle, and the rest True or Mostly True?” Well, I can imagine him making every part of that statement (to get to an ultimate "Barely True") except the last one, after the thoughtful “hmmm.” 

At least that’s how it worked out, almost with an uncanny precision: Of the 414 PolitiFact rulings posted between September 1 and November 1, 80 of them, about 20%, were by organizations (ranging from Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS to “Blue Oregon”), blogs (one simply called “Bloggers”), and chain e-mails (one also simply called “chain emails”). A little over half were from Republican groups. Ten percent of the rulings were equally divided between True or Mostly True, 52.5% were equally divided Half True or Barely True, and the rest (3/8 or 37.5%) equally divided between False and Pants on Fire.

It’s lying time again: Overall, the Politi-Score average for Campaign 2010’s orgs, blogs and e-mails was just over Barely True, while in comparison, my original sampling of just over 1,000 rulings in August yielded an average just over Half True. See the splice of my spreadsheet below. Organizations, bloggers and emails by themselves scored just below Barely True, more conspicuously on the “wide measure”.

Things got a little more complicated, however when the rulings were broken down between Democrats and Republicans. There were more rulings for Republicans who had 54% of the total, or 43 rulings, versus 44% for the Democrats, or 34 rulings. While everyone was lower overall for the campaign season (both candidates and non-candidates), the averages followed a similar pattern of Democrats having a higher Politi-Score than the Republicans. When I began my calculations with the statements rated True, it looked like the Republicans might come out on top, the Democrats had only one ruling rated True while the Republicans had three. While the Republicans had NO statements rated Mostly True (compared to the Dems having three), the two parties had roughly the same numbers for Half and Barely True. It was the False and Pants on Fire rulings that brought the Republicans’ average down to 37% below that of the Democrats over all (using the “wide measure” scoring). Those groups identified with Republicans had 60% more False statements, and twice as many Pants on Fire.

Next Stop: taking these rulings out of the numbers to see how much the overall gap closes between the Politi-Score of Democrats versus Republicans.