Our first encounter with a numbers problem came last September when Ron Paul cited the war death toll in a debate. "We've lost over 5,000 Americans over there in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and plus the civilians killed," Paul said.
Turns out the fatality count on that date was actually 4,349 if you include civilian deaths. Does that mean Paul was wrong? Should he get a False on the Truth-O-Meter? …
In Paul's case, his point was a simple one, that many people have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He overstated the number, but not by all that many. …
To assess the truth for a numbers claim, the biggest factor is the underlying message.
Ron Paul received a rating from PolitiFact (PF) of Mostly True for this statement Bill Adair used in explaining how rulings were arrived at, reflecting a variance of about 13% between 4,349 and 5,000. And it should be noted that Paul said OVER 5,000. The underlying point was that many people have died in Iraq.
In this PolitiFact Virginia ruling, the statement being fact-checked was one by DNC Chairman Tim Kaine: that “jobs increased 1 percent under George Bush while population grew 10 percent." PF Virginia’s writer Sean Gorman found that the nation’s population grew by about 7.8% during this time, according the U.S. Census Bureau, and that jobs grew by .83 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Doing the math, that puts Kaine’s numbers within about 6% (a ratio of 9.4 to 1 instead of 10 to 1) of what he claimed. Therefore Gorman considered them “pretty much on the mark” and awarded a “Mostly True” ruling to Kaine. Considering Republican Ron Paul received a “Mostly True” for being 13% (or more) off, does Tim Kaine merit it for half that margin of error?
