Truth Index+: Buh-Bye, Bachmann

What can I say.

Michele Bachmann was someone I termed a statistical "outlier" when it came to the PolitiFact Truth Index+, because she was so far off everyone else in terms of it, as well as in terms of its category Pants on Fire. When she announced she would not run for her congressional seat in 2014, PolitiFact "honored" her by describing the reasons for such a feat:

She had a remarkable streak: Her first 13 ratings were False or Pants on Fire.

Bachmann went on to compete in the 2012 Republican primary for president. She earned her first True rating for a statement she made during a 2011 debate that then-Sen. Obama "refused to raise the debt ceiling because he said President Bush had failed in leadership."

When a question was raised about her veracity, Bachmann cited our work during one of the many Republican presidential debates. "After the debate that we had last week, PolitiFact came out and said that everything I said was true," she said at a debate in Sioux City, Iowa, on Dec. 15, 2011.

Alas, she was totally wrong. In fact, the week before we had rated her statement that Mitt Romney instituted "socialized medicine" in Massachusetts as Pants on Fire.

Bachmann has been extensively covered on this blog--in fact, my very last post--and has been subjected to the Politi-Score, that is, taking into account all the fact-checks done on her by every source. In her case, she had four (4) sources because of the Minnesota Public Radio Fact-Checker in her home state. And she required more work than the others I've measured using the Politi-Score, as I ended up with a 5-part series when I covered her in August of 2011. It is still worth checking out, as it goes over many of the statements she made which were checked multiple times: (at that time) of the 50 statements from the 4 fact-checkers, a third of them were duplicated, and two statements were checked by all four fact-checkers (and for the most part rated quite consistently, which says something about the integrity of the fact-checkers' processes).

 

61% of Bachmann's statements
were rated False, of which
42% were Pants on Fire

Her Truth Index+ alone, however, should be reviewed in proper context. PolitiFact provided her last ratings by percentage for 59 rulings (see chart at right), but that was all (the same they would do for anyone else). Here is how she looks (below) when you calculate Bachmann's Truth Index+ and compare it to the overall Truth Index+ (through 3/31/2013), as well as that for Republicans overall, for Democrats overall, and compared to her fellow Republicans in Congress, and as an added individual comparison, to the next best female Democrat in congress who probably gets closest to her in terms of making those occasional outrageous statements, Nancy Pelosi, although she's only been subjected to the Truth-o-Meter 22 times, I'm assuming because she relinquished her Speaker of the House position following the Republican mid-term election rout in early 2011(and didn't attempt a run for president as Bachmann did).

 

As can be seen, the Truth Index+ for all the other measures goes from 84% higher for the Democrats overall down to 54% higher for her fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives. I'd also venture to say that for those who've had 50 or more rulings, which puts her in a very special Truth Index+ category especially for females, she probably ranks dead last as far as the Truth Index+ (males AND females).  And the more rulings, the more tell-tale "for truthiness" is the Truth Index+.

 

Today, PolitiFact published an article re-iterating its "principles" with regard to doing rulings. Bill Adair, PolitiFact's creator and outgoing manager, stated under the heading "Choosing Claims to Check" that "we select the most newsworthy and significant ones" and in a bulleted list of "questions they ask themselves" in selecting a statement asked "Would a typical person hear or read the statement and wonder: Is that true?" And Bachmann certainly met that criteria in many of her statements.  

 

In some ways, hard-line conservativism and Tea Party associations made her a colorful character.  But I can't really say she will be missed. Well, we still have 19 months to go, and anything can happen...so I'll keep my mouth shut.