Reviewing the
PolitiFact rulings almost one by one from since "in the beginning" to re-verify my totals and make the
details more accurate has been quite the experience. It's taken almost two months, and I found I
made a lot of mistakes: not enough to
change all the averages I've presented in this blog, except in one area, which
is the "Official/Non-Official." I believe the well known Eric Ostermeier study of 511 PolitiFact rulings from 2010 used those currently or previously in an elected office: I decided that
was not a good way to do it because there may be a difference in the level of truthfulness
between being in office and not being in office. Office-holders were only designated as such
when they were in an elected office at the time the statement was made as
evaluated by PolitiFact.
I had a
couple gender and party misidentifications, plus quite a few records which were done by
the state PolitiFacts which I had included with National for through 2010. My ruling count now corresponds with what
someone at PolitiFact kindly told me their number was. So, through the end of September, 2012, PolitiFact added a record number 556 rulings
for the quarter, to now total 6,274 rulings.
Here is how they breakdown affiliation-wise:
There are a
lot of reasons why PolitiFact has selected proportionately more Republican
statements than Democrats, the main one being that outside the president,
Republicans have dominated state/local governments, particularly the PolitiFact
regions that started up in 2010, such as Ohio (John Kasich), Florida (Rick Scott),
Virginia (Bob McDonnell), Texas (Rick Perry), and Wisconsin (Scott Walker). If PolitiFact had a New York or California affiliate,
I'm guessing we'd see more Democrat rulings.
Next the
revised Truth Index--which I'm calling Truth Index+ for now-- will be explained featuring the new database.
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