Truth Index: Individual Truth Index Fest

Presentation of the PolitiFact (PF) Truth Index individually can be done in any number of ways. Some people want to see everything, others want a more current perspective. Most want to see Republicans versus Democrats. Some want just to see the ratings for people. Some want them highest to lowest in terms of the Truth Index. Some want comparisons. So I’m going to show a little bit of everything.

I had done something on the presidential contenders, but every day this past week, the contenders seemed to be dropping like flies. At this point we’re down to the Final Four. But I’m going to include all of them since they all qualified because of the number of rulings PolitiFact made during the debates.

So I will start with 2011 and work my way down (or up) the various statistical machinations.

2011. The top 25 2011 politicians are listed here in the PolitiFact app format, from highest on the Truth Index to the lowest. I asterisked the Democrats…because there weren’t too many this year. Donald Trump and Herman Cain bottomed out the entire list, with Trump’s birther buffoonery giving him a negative 80 Truth Index for his 10 rulings, while Cain had 23 rulings with a negative 61.

Click to enlarge:  Tim Pawlenty was most truthful of ALL candidates, including Obama, according to the Truth Index.

The most honest Republican Truth Index-wise was Florida Senator Marco Rubio at a positive 30 Truth Index. Other than DNC Chairperson Debbie Wasserman-Schultz at a precise “Half True” zero on the Index, all of the Democrats occupied the positive side of the chart. The Republican presidential contenders varied a great deal other than the extremes of Trump and Cain: Tim Pawlenty, the first candidate to drop out of the campaign, was getting the highest rating, a positive 13, edging out President Obama.

2011 and prior (ALL rulings). Some of the candidates, Jon Huntsman, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain and Donald Trump, had not been rated by PolitiFact at all prior to 2011. The ratings shown for them are “all time.” So, it may be interesting to see how the candidates compare overall, by including every PolitiFact ruling done. Here’s how it would look for the same people in the same format above.

Click to enlarge

Change from 2010 overall to 2011 overall. But there are those that may be interested in the delta: the (cumulative) change in Truth Index up until the end of 2010, to the end of 2011. Here is how that looks, although a little explanation is necessary: with the exception of Ohio Governor John Kasich, those candidates without 2011-prior rulings obviously don’t show a blue bar. Kasich doesn’t show a 2011 red bar because he scored a Truth Index score of exactly zero for 2011 for his 27 rulings.

Click to enlarge:  Mitt and Newt (highlighted) both dropped a bit but not much; Obama held steady; Bachmann greatly improved.

This comparison shows how most of the presidential candidates fell down in the Truth Index, as (someone might say) it appears PolitiFact was finding a lot more untruthful statements during the debates and in other venues of the Republican presidential campaign. On the other hand, the increased attention to one-time presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, resulted in a plethora of new PF rulings on her which bettered her pants partly on fire negative 123 Truth Index to a close to mostly false negative 63. Clearly, she had more opportunity to get PolitiFact points with her candidacy.

Some, like Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and Obama, kept their averages roughly the same. Rick Perry had a safety-in-numbers advantage in that with the help of PolitiFact Texas, he’s one of the very few with over 100 rulings. This mitigated any large changes.

Everything and Every One. The top sixty recipients of ten or more PF rulings comprised 2,075, or 44%, of the 4,707  rulings published through the end of 2011. Here’s the list in alphabetical order: it includes the political affiliation, the number of rulings, the Truth Index, and the percentage of False and Pants on Fire rulings. An analysis was also done on how the Democrats and Republicans compared in terms of this percentage (to update what was found by Eric Ostermeier at Smart Politics in 2010). I’ll be publishing that later, although those really interested can figure it out from this info unless they’re severely mathematically challenged.

Truth Index: 2011 PolitiFact Writers

There’s been some suggestions to me for improvements to the PolitiFact (PF) Truth Index on writers, and so I’ve tried to incorporate them here. One was, that my previous method of presenting the writers, by degree of variance between the Democrat and Republican Truth Index, didn’t mean a whole lot , and was in and of itself not a sufficient indicator that the writer might be biased. So I’ve decided to relate it to the state Truth Indexes for now.

It is true that it’s really hard to tell much from doing it the way I did it before. When I hear about “selection bias” the question becomes, to me, who does the selection, and how do they select. If a writer is not part of selecting the claim, in other words, if the claim is an assignment, this would certainly affect their variance. Some of the writers have very true leaning ratings (like Eric Stirgus of PF Georgia) while others have very false leaning ratings (like James Nelson of PF Wisconsin). A future post might look more closely at why Eric Stirgus appears to have so many more True ratings for both parties as compared to his PF Georgia compatriot Willoughby Mariano, especially if the Truth Index holds for both in 2012.  It was surmised that part of the reason PF Wisconsin's averages dropped was because of the labor unrest and recall efforts (and statements made associated with them) which were highly publicized in February.

The Truth Index here reflects all PolitiFact rulings for the year 2011 because that’s when I started keeping track of the writers.

Click to enlarge: These include ALL 2011 work of the writer (some also wrote for PF National as well as their state.)
Jacob Geiger's Democrat Truth Index calculated to zero.

Tom Feran of PF Ohio had the largest variance between Democrats and Republicans the last time, and retained this “gap” for 2011, at almost 60 points. He did about 60% more Republican rulings. Half of his Democrat rulings were done on Dennis Kucinich and Senator Sherrod Brown, who score very high on the individual Truth Index (Steve at Quibbling Potatoes also noted the affect on the Truth Index of Sherrod Brown) and might explain why his Democrat Truth Index was so high.

The Truth Indexes by writer are in the same order as the PF states featuring the major writers (those who have written the most rulings) for that state. This can be compared to the Truth Index by state in my previous post. For an even closer look, here’s a chart on the two Republican-favorable states Virginia and Wisconsin, to get a look at which writers affected the averages.

Click to enlarge:  Geiger's looks slightly different than overall chart because it only includes his PF Virginia work.

A few personnel changes should be noted here as well. It appears Robert Farley is no longer writing for PF National. I often see him as a writer over at FactCheck.Org., so he may have “jumped ship.” One of PF Virginia’s writers, Jacob Geiger, has not authored a ruling since July, 2011, and it appears he’s been replaced by Warren Fiske along with a rev up by Sean Gorman.

Next, individual politician ratings.

Truth Index: National and (or versus?) States

The PolitiFact (PF) state or regional analysis requires (in my view) that all the rulings through 2011 be included (adding those from 2010 and prior) to get the best statistical picture. That’s how it’s been handled in the past. PolitiFact New Jersey and New Hampshire were 2011 PolitiFact start ups, and some of the states don’t do as many rulings as others for obvious reasons. PolitiFacts Oregon and Rhode Island did the fewest rulings, generally about a quarter of what PolitiFacts Florida and Texas do. I’ve posted about this before; the state’s quantity of rulings roughly follows the population/amount of political representation, but not always.

PolitiFact New Hampshire is an anomaly because it only reports on the presidential candidates as "PolitiFact 2012" and does nothing of a “local” nature.  I’ve been tempted to include New Hampshire with National. And today, the day of my post, is the New Hampshire primary. I’m almost wondering what happens next when the primary is over? Was this just a project for a large staff of interns? We’ll know very soon. 

New Hampshire also holds the distinction, although with only 60 total rulings, as having the highest Truth Index for the Democrats as well as the largest variance between Democrats and Republicans. Since New Hampshire is only covering issues related to the presidential race at a national level, this serves to contrast the Republican’s higher “truthiness” at a local level discovered previously.  It also makes me bring up another theory of mine:  that Bill Adair is relegating some of the "liberal bias" to a "state" to lower the truth index variance between Republicans and Democrats at PolitiFact National.   I will save doing an analysis on this for later.

PolitiFacts Virginia and Wisconsin still favor the Republicans by a small margin. Most variances between Democrats and Republicans have stayed pretty steady; PolitiFact Virginia, the "reddest" PolitiFact state (where the Richmond Times-Dispatch has been established to endorse Republicans), still favors them by a small margin, going positive on its Republican Truth Index. PolitiFact Wisconsin has the worst Truth Index in terms of “lying”, at an overall average of negative 42.4, with the Republicans slightly more truthful than Democrats.

Click to enlarge:  The non-affiliated numbers are not included so the chart would look less cluttered.

Here’s how it looks when PF National is compared to all the states combined. This graph also includes the numbers on rulings on those with “Other” Independent, non-partisan or unknown political affiliations.

Click to enlarge:  Politically unaffiliated ratings are included here as "Other."

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.

Tchotchkes: 2011 in Review

Parody of Stereo Hearts by Gym Class Heroes
(By Chandler Dean of Shocking Productions)

PolitiFact 2011 Lie of the Year: Guest Post

By Lee Papa, also known as The Rude Pundit

CAUTION:  Language used in this guest post can be profane and very offensive.  That's why the Rude Pundit's by-line is "Proudly Lowering the Level of Political Discourse."  This post was copied from his blog.

We all know how it goes. We've seen it in a million movies, TV shows, books. We've experienced it again and again. You can be a major cocksman, someone who can walk into a place like the Tampa Mens Club, ripped and hung, and, great glory hole, find a willing mouth in no time flat. But there's that one dude, that one buff, spiky blonde who just rejects you outright. He shuts down your game, he ignores your jokes, he doesn't glance at your pecs while you do some awesome lifts. Nothing. In fact, he tells you flat out in the locker room that he thinks you're full of shit, that you don't turn him on, and "Can you get those shaved balls out of my face?" Now, of course, you could just tell him and his friends, who laugh at his rejection of you, to fuck off, that you don't need 'em, and just ride another pony, but, goddamnit, how dare he not want you? And then you start doing stupid shit to try to get him to see that you are suck-worthy. You tell others how hot you think he is. You try to let him see how much you're checking him out. You laugh at jokes he tells across the room. In other words, you become a pathetic ass. And however cool or hot you may have been, you're just blowing it all away on someone who just doesn't want to fuck you.

This game plays out all the time in Washington, DC. What has a significant part of Obama's first term been other than a sad attempt to get Republicans to see him as worthy of their votes? How has that shaken out? And you remember when National Public Radio decided to start "balancing" its news broadcasts with more conservative viewpoints (which meant really just offering someone to spin the facts All Things Considered was reporting) because Republicans were threatening to defund it? That was actually back in the mid-1990s. Did that end all the "controversy" over its funding?

Back in February of this year, the blog Smart Politics, of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, released a study that said that PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning effort of the St. Petersburg Times to rate the truth of the words of politicians' and others, had assigned "'Pants on Fire' or 'False' ratings to 39 percent of Republican statements compared to just 12 percent of Democrats since January 2010." Another way to put that is that, of all the statements rated so low, Republicans made 76% of them, compared to just 22% of Democrats. You can flounder around for excuses if you want, but the study showed that the nearly the same number of statements from each side was analyzed. So, in order to attack PolitiFact, you can only say that its editors are biased and deliberately choose statements by Republicans that they know will be proven false. It's either that or it's just that Republicans are generally lying motherfuckers, which would be the easy answer.

Of course, like so many who are afraid of being perceived as too liberal and need desperately to be loved by Republicans, PolitiFact has now overcompensated with a completely fucktarded choice for its "Lie of the Year" for 2011: that Democrats lied when they said that "Republicans voted to end Medicare," despite the fact that Republicans voted to make a government-run health insurance program into a private insurance voucher system and just call it "Medicare," when "Medicare," as we know it, would cease to exist. In other words, they voted to end Medicare.

Others have dissected how this supposed "lie" is actually true, and it's been roundly mocked in Left Blogsylvania and Twitterburg.

But PolitiFact's own defense of its decision is obscenely absurd: Democrats are lying because current old people will still have Medicare? But that's called a "phase-out," which you do when you are, you know, ending something. And that it was an "overreach" for Democrats to use the words "kill" or "end" because the program would still exist? Except that it wouldn't exist. It's like PolitiFact used logic out of a Family Guy episode: just because actor James Woods stole Peter Griffin's wallet, he could claim he was Peter Griffin, and everyone is forced to believe it or be accused of lying. (Yeah, yeah, but the Rude Pundit was trying to find an analogy that everyone else hadn't used.)

In fact, one could make the case that in order to call this a "lie," PolitiFact itself has to, for lack of a better word, lie about how Paul Ryan's newfangled Medicare is the same as current Medicare.

Mostly, though, it's pathetic because the whole thing is such pandering to Republicans. And, sorry, dear newspapers concerned about things like "facts" and "reality" and "truth," but they're not gonna fuck you. They tend to only want to fuck themselves.