PolitiFact’s adding the percentages to the Truth-o-Meter tally on its website made me realize that when it came to individual rankings, I was wasting my time with my spreadsheets. I could do the individual tally “real time” as long as I knew who had the most rulings…which for the most part isn’t too hard to figure out.
Those who ran and who are running for president, or are an official in a PolitiFact state, got the most rulings. John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin are hardly ever subjected to the Truth-o-Meter these days, but they’ve had a bigger share of PolitiFact rulings overall than a lot of people making the news today because of the 2008 election campaigns. I suspect by election day,the newly selected Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan might get up there in number to make the list, especially with PolitiFact Wisconsin’s help, although he has a way to go.
There are sixteen individuals who’ve had at least 40 PolitiFact rulings, and they comprise a bit over 25% of all of them. Here they are in order of the highest Truth Index to the lowest, and congratulations Hillary—appearing more “truthful” doesn’t seem to correlate to “winning” or getting one more votes, does it?
They are more of the representative sample that should be used in any “testing” of the Truth-o-Meter as to “truthfulness” or that supposed bias, but I won’t get into that here.
For those interested, for the top 16, the Democrats comprised 35% of the rulings (yes, for Hillary, Obama and Joe Biden!). The Democrat Truth Index was a positive 15.5, compared with an almost zero (.22) for all Democrat rulings; the Republicans a negative 16.8, compared with a negative 23 overall. (AND for what it's worth, the percent of Pants on Fire measure was 1.92 in favor of the Democrats.)
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