Although I've not completed the total counts of the rulings, I'd say at this point I have over 98% of them, enough to publish some preliminary charts.
The total PolitiFact rulings from January 1 through March 31, 2011, will come to about 480, unless there's some over-production today (March 31) it might get to 500. About 110 of the rulings came from PolitiFact National. The preliminary breakdown by ruling is as follows, with the dashed line indicating all rulings with data labels to make it more comparable to the blue "Democrat" ruling line and the red "Republican" ruling line. I don't expect it will change much from this come April 1.
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The Politi-Score is running 54 for the Democrats and 42 for the Republicans overall for office-holders only (to coincide with Eric Ostermeier's study, although both these charts reflect the total of rulings of PolitiFact National plus the affiliated states). It appears from the chart above that there was a very wide divergence in the "Mostly True" category with Democrats having twice the percentage of rulings compared to the Republicans.
Another comparison many are interested in is how the averages look in relation to the 2010 Campaign cycle. Indeed, the truth gets a beating when it's election time:
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| The "Trues" got halved and the Pants caught on Fire about 50% more of the time during Campaign 2010. |
I did not discern between Democrats and Republicans here as I felt it was more important to compare them overall to the election period. But I will publish that comparison as well once I have all the data.
As my database evolves with additional information input, I hope to publish more interesting, informative analyses. This time I will be looking at the ruling topics as well as the writers, to see how they are affected by the "Truth-O-Meter." So don't touch that remote (lol!)
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