PolitiFact (PF) Ohio (Stephen Koff) recently did a sort of self-congratulatory one-year anniversary article on the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s foray into doing Truth-O-Meter rulings in partnership with PolitiFact. This was one of the first times I saw more “raw” numbers come out for Democrats and Republicans, as well as the defending of the selection of more Republican statements, Koff’s reason being the same as that I had stated previously: there’s just more Republicans in office since the elections of late 2010, especially in Ohio.
My numbers did not correlate precisely with PF Ohio because of how I had compiled them in 2010, which was by person/entity since the beginning of PF in 2007, not ruling by ruling to differentiate the state. I started doing it ruling by ruling in 2011. So, for example, I had seven more rulings for Dennis Kucinich and three more for Sherrod Brown, because PF National was doing rulings on them prior to PF Ohio’s existence. In addition, there were a few people and groups who, as I just noted in a previous post on light bulbs, do not have an affiliation indicated by PF, when they should. When PF doesn’t show an affiliation, I will do some research to determine one, and if the connection to one party is crystal clear, I will assign it as such.
So, I will just go with PF Ohio’s numbers. Here’s Democrats and Republicans, this time in the mobile app format with the Truth Index ("Score") calculated.
My conservative counterpart (Bryan White) just published an exchange he had with Robert Higgs, who appears to be the lead journalist for PF Ohio, and who responded to some of the commenters to the PF Ohio article. Higgs published this reply concerning PolitiFact bias, which he thereupon immediately published in his blog:
What I can tell you about PolitiFact Ohio is that in our first year we did 81 Truth-O-Meter rulings on statements from Democrats and 103 from Republicans (more on the GOP side principally because Kasich is governor and there's twice as many Republicans in power as Democrats).The average grade for Democrats: Half TrueThe average grade for Republicans: Half TrueSome say the Texas Rangers have a better team batting average than the Seattle Mariners.What I can tell you about it is that right now both teams are in the American League.The Seattle Mariners are batting roughly .250.The Texas Rangers are batting roughly .250
Bryan White responded in a post through his blog the way I might have, except I would not have used the Rangers-Mariners analogy…I would have used the Truth Index, the actual measure, to show Higgs that there was a statistically significant variance even though they’re both “roughly Half True.”
Higgs isn't saying anything. The "average" when there are only six positions on the scale is a very rough approximation, just like rounding the Rangers' batting average down from .272 and the Mariners' battering average up from .226. Is a difference of .46 statistically significant? You betcha. It's huge.
