An initial look at the results of a compilation of PolitiFact's Flip-o-Meter rulings, on the surface, appear rather mundane and offer nothing of interest: An equal distribution of flips between Republicans and Democrats. It really doesn’t tell you much. The Republicans made only two more flips than the Democrats, and they had more half flips, whatever that is (I regard a "Half Flip" along the same lines as a statement ruled "Half True"--an PolitiFact equivocation.)
Most anyone who reads PolitiFact can probably make the obvious guess of who made the most flips. Here are all of those with two or more flips:
But we might want to take a look at how these flippers as a group do on the Politi-Score as well as graphically. Here are the calculations in Excel:
Translation: It appears Democrats are more truthful, and Republicans are just as truthful (the Republicans were within 1/100 of the overall average) as the overall averages, despite their "flipping." However, because many of them are those with a high number of rulings, and it’s been established they are “truthier” as well, this finding may not mean as much. This is how it looks graphically:
Again, the Democrats seem to have a higher truthiness factor than the Republicans, particularly when compared to the average of all flippers as well as the averages in total. The graph has an interesting trend concerning the Republicans: Republican flippers seem to make fewer True statements and more False and Pants on Fire statements, while the Democrats are the opposite. But you really can't form an objective judgment on only 66 flips, IMHO.
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