PolitiFact Truth Index Rankings

It’s finally time to look at individual Truth Index ratings and do something that I don’t know is available on PolitiFact’s mobile app: ranking them in order of high to low for the Truth Index scores. A few qualifications are in order, however.

As noted in my Politi-Score description, you can’t do much when politician “Joe Sixpack” has only two rulings from PolitiFact. It means very little. But the ongoing aggregation of rulings is starting to provide a more substantive record for every type of politico. The last time I did this ranking, I set my ruling minimum at 10, because if I set it higher, I would not have had much to list. Now, however, I am pleased to say I can bring that minimum up to 15 rulings or more, and have an end result of a ranked list of 25. (Click here to see a list of those with 10 or more rulings done with accumulated rulings through the end of 2010.)

Certain people were removed with 15 or more rulings, who were those no longer active in politics, such as Charlie Crist and John Edwards. I kept Hillary Clinton, since she is still around as Secretary of State, even though she’s had no rulings in the last six months.

With that said, below is the bar chart which shows the ranking using the Truth Index report card color coding that is on the PolitiFact mobile app. You can see that it’s hard to tell how they compare with the colors, though the ranking gives it more meaning. For example, in terms of the Truth Index, Republican Ohio Governor John Kasich has never said anything that merited a Pants on Fire ruling, yet he is below the zero or Half True marker at Number 13 on the list, below fellow Republican Florida Governor Rick Scott, who hit the Half True on the nose (i.e., he scored exactly zero with the Truth Index—there is an arrow marking there to indicate the “Half True” baseline), and has had three Pants on Fire rulings.

Click to enlarge

This group of 25 individuals/groups ranked represent just over a third of all PolitiFact rulings since they began doing them up through the end of June. The collective Truth Index for this group, FYI, is (9.29).

As in-office politicians go, however, Michele Bachmann bottoms out the list. And yes, according to the Truth Index, Bill Adair is (technically!) correct in saying that she is only exceeded in being the biggest “liar” by chain e-mails. As I’ve noted before the Truth Index is heavily weighted to the False/Pants on Fire side. She needs at least three Trues to offset two Pants on Fire…don’t think that’s going to happen even with continual accusations of selection bias.

Below is the list from which I created the chart, giving the exact numbers.  While not as “pretty to look at” it does give further clarification to the bar chart.