Truth Index: All Politics "R" Local

What is termed “local” deals with the nature of the PolitiFact (PF) ruling. Most often it would show in the title or subtitle. It means it just relates to something having to do with the state or locality, that it’s not national. It could be ideological, but it still pertains to a local issue. None of these rulings were from PolitiFact National. Intuitively they wouldn’t, but state PolitiFact rulings can be done for an office holder of that (PolitiFact) state, while the subject of the fact-check is of national scope. In other words, without reviewing each ruling, the state rulings can't all be counted as local.

For that reason, the rulings here only reflect the final quarter of 2011 because that is when I decided to start keeping track of the ruling itself along with whether it was “local.” I will continue doing this in 2012 to see if  trends continue.

There’s also an “overlap” which required these rulings be separately charted. Many of them are in the source or occupation category “office holders.” A good example is a statement by Rick Perry (office holder) made on Fox News in December, that “… Texas did not bail out a loan program he oversaw as state agriculture commissioner”:

Neil Cavuto of Fox News initially noted that noted that Perry wants Congress to stop spending so much. Then, referring to Austin American-Statesman reporting, Cavuto said the Texas program "had so many defaults that the state had to stop guaranteeing bank loans to start-ups in the agribusiness and eventually bailed out the program with the taxpayer money. So aren't you guilty of the same behavior you rail against as a presidential candidate?" Cavuto asked.

Perry replied: "Number one, don't believe everything you read in the Austin American-Statesman. And the second side of it is, we had that program put in place, and the state did not bail (it) out; those programs worked as they were supposed to work. Just like in any bank or any business, you are going to have some that fail."

At first blush this sounds like the subject could be the federal budget. It really has to do with what Perry did when he was the Texas Agricultural Commissioner in the 1990’s. Since the fact-check has to do specifically with Texas, Perry’s claim was counted as a local one.

Even though my example was a Republican with “Pants on Fire” it appears that locally, Republicans are more truthful than Democrats….by a pretty good margin. Republicans were at a precise “zero” on the Truth Index, while the Democrats were a negative 27. There were 173 “local” rulings which represented 38% of all the PF rulings in the fourth quarter of 2011; Democrats and Republicans were also equally represented, each having 74 rulings. There were 25 rulings for which the affiliation was independent, non-partisan or just unknown.

Click to enlarge:  Truth Index is in parentheses next to label.  Republicans were 27 points higher than Democrats locally.

Thirty percent of Democrat rulings were False or Pants on Fire, while only 18 percent of Republican rulings were in these categories. On the truthful side, almost 40% of Republican statements were found to be True or Mostly True, while only about 27% of Democrat statements were found to be the same.

Explanation? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that maybe it has to do with ideology, and the fact ideological issues with a national scope are not quite as prominent at the local level. Most local ruling topics just aren't seen at the national level: like in Florida, a fact-check concerning whether or not there are pass-throughs on Miami utility bills, or whether 31 of 588 New Jersey school districts receive 70% of their aid from the state. National issues are a bit more ubiquitous.

The two most-covered topics, comprising 20 percent of the “local” rulings were elections and education, many relating to recalls (elections) and what budget cuts were doing to education in Wisconsin. In fact, half of those rulings under the two topics were from PolitiFact Wisconsin.

The original Truth Index “inventor” Steve of Quibbling Potatoes briefly touched on the local factor when he examined “state-based politicians” as opposed to “Washington-based.” He compared governors, state senate and state houses with results favoring the Democrats; however, his governor numbers were greatly skewed because he had 35 fact-checks for Republicans and only one for Democrats. His charts, however, had the Democrats more truthful across the board.

Click to enlarge:  While Dems are measured "more" honest by Steve here, Republicans' state Truth Index was better than National's.

His following post included a graph (above) with a combined PF state index compared by party with a national one. That’s when he noted the trend between national and local. He came up with his own theories as to why Washington-based Republican politicians appear to lie more than those statewide: (emphasis added)

For Democrats, PolitiFact National averages very close to the state average. For Republicans, PolitiFact National scores much lower than the state average. Since the National branch of PolitiFact tends to analyze statements with a national policy scope more than the state branches do, one can look at this fact a couple of different ways. One is that Republicans with a national scope lie more often than their state and local counterparts do. Or, PolitiFact National has an anti-Republican partisan bias. Or perhaps it could be due to some other factor. Maybe Republican pants-on-fire ratings drive more traffic to the website through links on Facebook and liberal blogs, and PolitiFact’s editors could be motivated to sample more of these statements than other types.

I found that there is very little variance between national and state as far as selection of False and Pants on Fire statements overall (in 2011). The number of statements is about the same proportionately (PF National does not select False and Pants on Fire statements overall more than the states). However, the number of Republican Pants on Fire statements from PF National outnumber the Democrats 10.5 to 1 (48 total Pants on Fire; 42 Republican and 4 Democrat). At the PF states the Republican Pants on Fire outnumber those of Democrats about 2 to 1 (116 total Pants on Fire; 66 Republican and 34 Democrat). So Steve may have a point on the “driving more traffic.”

But another thought occurred to me. As was shown in the initial month to month measurement of PF rulings, there was a spike up in December, in not just the Republican Truth Index, but in the number of Republican fact-checks (from a normal 5/3 ratio to about a 3/1 ratio to Democrats). December, the month the Lie of the Year “event” takes place…which I believe was pre-determined as a “win” for Republicans. You could almost say from this that PolitiFact was upping the ante in a strategic play to prove its non-bias non-partisanship.

Next, a closer look at the state PolitiFacts.