Survey: Republicans Believe False Things

The title of this post is in reference to a Selzer poll conducted for Bloomberg Politics, described by Al Hunt.

A Bloomberg Politics poll shows that on two controversial issues, the budget deficit and deporting illegal immigrants, the public believes Obama's critics–even though reality favors the president.

By 73 percent to 21 percent, the public says the federal budget deficit has gotten bigger during the Obama presidency.

It hasn't.

By 53 percent to 29 percent, Americans believe that Obama has sent fewer undocumented immigrants home than were deported a decade earlier.

He has sent more.

On the surface, this is a sad statement about the knowledge the American public has about news.  But digging a little deeper, one finds that one party in particular is driving the results here.

Republicans by an 8-to-1 ratio say the budget deficit has grown over the last six years; a smaller majority of independents and Democrats say that. Likewise, 66 percent of Republicans say there have been fewer deportations versus only 45 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of independents.

There are subjective questions polling firms ask about how politicians are handling economic crises, or if one approves of a politician, and I basically ignore them, because there is no right answer. It's just an opinion. But then there are questions about basic facts, which are like examinations of poll respondents.  It is no longer "what do you think of this?", it's "what do you know about this?".  And this survey shows that being a Republican is strongly correlated with not knowing about both the budget and current immigration policy.

Senate Polls - The Final Weekend

As we head into the final polling days before election day (48 hours!), the senate races have mostly only gotten better for the Democrats.  Before this election cycle, the consensus was that the Republicans would take over the senate due to Obama's negative favorability rating combined with a stacked deck of blue seats on the line.  But Republican candidates have totally screwed the pooch this year due to their rape gaffes basically. That recent large uptick in the average median poll spread graph was due entirely to Richard Mourdock.

The median poll spread shows Democrats increasing their majority in the senate by one seat to 54.  The biggest caveat to that is the fact that it still shows Dems picking up Arizona, where there were only three polls released in October (and where there will be at least one new poll released today). On the other hand, it shows Heitkamp and Tester losing in North Dakota and Montana, so one could argue that it is actually not strong enough for Democrats.

(For the presidential race graphs, click here)

WEST (LOW INFORMATION) REGIONAL

North Dakota (R+4) (based on 4 latest polls from Mason-Dixon, Pharos, Rasmussen and Forum/Essman) - Far too few polls to really judge what's going on.  Two polls came out last week: one showed Heitkamp up two, one showed Berg up two.




















Arizona (D+1) (based on 3 latest polls from Rasmussen, BRC and PPP) - No polls came out this past week. Do Arizonans not have phones?




















Montana (R+0.5) (based on 4 latest polls from Rasmussen, Pharos, PPP and Mason-Dixon) - This is another circumstance where my methodology gives a weird result.  There hasn't been a poll showing Denny Rehberg on top of Jon Tester since a September 23 Mason-Dixon poll (a new one will come out today or tomorrow).  But Tester's numbers are (45, 46, 48, 49) and Rehberg's are (44, 47, 48, 48), Rehberg is up by a half point.



















Nevada (R+1) (based on 6 latest polls from Survey USA, Marist, PPP, Rasmussen, Suffolk and WeAskAmerica) - There was only one new poll last week, by Survey USA, and it showed Heller up 6 on Berkley.  Berkley hasn't been up in a poll since September 25.  I think this one point margin is too close.

MIDWEST (RAPE GAFFE) REGIONAL

Missouri (D+4.5) (based on 4 latest polls from WeAskAmerica, Mason-Dixon, PPP and Rasmussen) - The grandaddy of all rape gaffers, Todd Akin continues to trail in polls including two released this week.  No poll has shown an Akin lead since that fateful day in August when he gave that interview to KTVI in St. Louis.




















Indiana (D+5) (based on 3 latest polls from Rasmussen, Howey/DePauw and Pharos) - Finally two independent polls were released last week, both showing pro-lifer Joe Donnelly leading pro-lifer Richard Mourdock, but despite having the smaller lead shown for Donnelly, it was the Rasmussen poll that was the most effectual in moving the spread from Mourdock+4 to Donnelly+5.



















Wisconsin (D+2) (based on 8 latest polls from PPP, WeAskAmerica, St. Norbert, Marist, Rasmussen, Marquette, Mason-Dixon and Quinnipiac) - Seven new polls were released in Wisconsin this past week, and Tammy Baldwin led in all but one of them, an unusual poll from St. Norbert that showed Obama winning by 9 (4.5 points above the median) but Baldwin losing by 3.  Still unexplained, at least to me, is why there was a rape-gaffe-like plummet in Tommy Thompson's numbers in September.  



















Nebraska (R+7.5) (based on 4 latest polls from WeAskAmerica, Gravis, Pharos and the Omaha World-Herald) - The Omaha World-Herald poll from October 27 showing Deb Fischer up by only 3 is single-handedly responsible for WeAskAmerica and Gravis's entrance into Nebraska's polling universe.  Predictably these polling firms showed Fischer way up (by 12 and 13).

NORTHEAST (HURRICANE RAVAGED) REGIONAL

Pennsylvania (D+6) (based on 9 latest polls from PPP, Susquehanna, Franklin & Marshall, Philadelphia Inquirer, Rasmussen, Pharos, Muhlenberg, Quinnipiac and Siena) - Pennsylvania recovered enough from the power outages caused by Hurricane Sandy to have two polls released today, but unfortunately one of them was from Susquehanna, the worst, most partisan independent polling firm in my database.  But the one-point lead they showed for Casey was actually an improvement from an earlier more outlandish poll.  Other than that earlier Susquehanna poll, no poll has shown Tom Smith with a lead since ... ever.



















Connecticut (D+4) (based on 7 latest polls from PPP, Rasmussen, Mason-Dixon, Quinnipiac, Survey USA, UConn and Siena) - One post hurricane poll was released this week showing Chris Murphy with the largest lead of any independent poll this cycle, 9 points.  Interestingly, Linda McMahon's median line looks like the southern border of Oklahoma.  This is only bad news for her, as she is now in the part of the Red River that starts to turn south towards Shreveport.




















Massachusetts (D+3.5) (based on 8 polls from PPP, Kimball, Suffolk, Boston Globe, Rasmussen, MassINC, Western New England U., and UMass) - There were four polls that came out last week, and they were a mixed bag.  Probably the most surprising was a Boston Globe poll that showed a tied race when they had shown Elizabeth Warren up 5 a month before.  Still, the other non-partisan polls looked good for Warren, and Rasmussen's latest even showed her up 5.

FLOHVA (OF LOVE) REGIONAL

Florida (D+6) (based on 13 latest polls from Marist, Mason-Dixon, WeAskAmerica, Gravis, Quinnipiac, Survey USA, PPP, Rasmussen, Susquehanna (VSS), Pharos, Fox News, Suffolk, and the Washington Post) - This race is over and has been for a long time.  But the chart looks like a left-facing alligator, or maybe a sparkplug, so it's still interesting.



















Ohio (D+6) (based on 13 latest polls from Columbus Dispatch, Marist, Rasmussen, U. of Cincinnati, Quinnipiac, Survey USA, Pharos, PPP, Gravis, Suffolk, Fox News, WeAskAmerica and the Washington Post) - 11 new polls came out this week and none of them showed Josh Mandel with a lead, though a Rasmussen poll went full-on Republican and called the race a tie.  More intriguingly, a Marist poll put Sherrod Brown up by only 5, still not exactly a toss-up but much closer than expected (the same poll had Obama up 6, making this one of only four polls in my database showing Obama polling ahead of Brown.  There are 62 Ohio polls in my database).  It still looks like Brown will win comfortably, but it is less of a slam dunk than in prior weeks.


















Virginia (D+3) (based on 9 latest polls from WeAskAmerica, Roanoke College, Quinnipiac, Gravis, Washington Post, Rasmussen, PPP, Marist and Suffolk) - It actually was not a good polling week for Tim Kaine.  There were three polls released: up 4, down 5 and tied.  The movement in the median spread reflected undecideds finally choosing one way or another more than anything else.  Overall neither Kaine nor Allen really has any polling momentum going into the final three days of the campaign. 

But even the Unskewed Polls guy is apparently saying Democrats will win a majority.  

Mid-October Polling Update

I have continued tracking and charting all of the polls in each state and deeming the winner of each state as determined by the median active credible poll.  As of today, these are the thirteen closest races that will determine the presidency.  I have presented them in descending order of likelihood of a  Mitt Romney victory.
(Jump to the senate graphs!)
Mitt Romney's baseline is 170 electoral votes.  He needs to find 100 more to win. 

Arizona (R+8) - The wild Hispanic voting bloc has long been rumored to live in this state.  Many Obama supporters claimed to have spotted it, but it remains elusive in shaping elections.

 

Missouri (R+6) - Obama was never expected to do well in this former bellwether state, and he isn't, though Rasmussen's recent poll showing Romney up by 11 is a bit of an outlier.

 

Florida (R+2) - On October 3rd, the night of the first debate, the median poll spread showed Barack Obama up by three points.  Today the median spread has him down two.  Florida experienced one of the largest post-first-debate swings (5 points).  It is interesting to me that Florida has been so competitive given the fact that it has more retirees, more Republican-leaning Latinos of Cuban descent, and more Southerners than the typical swing state.  I will be surprised if Barack Obama can win the critical I-4 corridor.

 

 

North Carolina (R+0.5) - The median poll shows North Carolina still in play. This is because the median uses some polls from September, during Obama's pre-debate surge.  Polls in October show an increasing Romney lead.

 

With these states and all the other ones that are not competitive, Mitt Romney has 235 electoral votes, only 35 away from the presidency. 

Virginia (tied) - Yesterday the median showed a one-point margin for Mitt Romney, though a PPP poll this morning moved the median to a tie.  On October 2, the spread was Obama +5. Since then, Romney has surged and Obama has slipped.  Should Romney improve any more nationally, Virginia will be one of the first states to tilt to Mitt Romney, adding 13 more electoral votes.

 

Colorado (tied) - Colorado has been very close for a very long time and continues to be close. Nine more electoral votes for Romney would give him 257 out of a needed 270.


















New Hampshire (O+1) - Still blue for now.  In 2008 Obama earned a 9-point victory in New Hampshire.  In 2004, New Hampshire was the only state Bush won in 2000 to go for Kerry.  Basically New Hampshire has moved from being a slightly red state to being bluer than the nation as a whole.  Not this time though.  Obama's post-debate slump has narrowed his margin in the Granite State from 6 points to 1 point in the median poll spread.  Should this state, one of many in which Romney owns property, continue to tilt towards its summer resident, Romney will have four more electoral votes (261).

Iowa (O+2.5) - Iowa was originally thought to be one of Obama's strongest of the "swing state firewall" states, but Obama's margin has shrunk as it has in most of the other swing states, down from 5.5 to 2.5.  Winning this state full of Mitt Romney's best demographic (white people) would give Romney 267 electoral votes, three away from winning.


















Nevada (O+2.5) - Nevada hasn't shown nearly the falloff in Obama margins that many other states have.  Right now Nevada is the tipping point state, but I think a more likely Romney path to victory goes through Wisconsin or Ohio.


















Wisconsin (O+3) - The reason I think this state more likely to go Romney's way than Nevada is because of the trend, though like Ohio, Wisconsin has consistently shown Obama on top.



















Ohio (O+3.5) - Like in 2004, Ohio will be the most watched state, even if it doesn't end up being the closest.  A Romney win in Ohio would mean he wouldn't have to win Iowa, Wisconsin, Nevada or even Colorado (as long as he gets Virginia and New Hampshire).  But if his performance on election night isn't strong enough to take Ohio, it definitely won't be strong enough to take Michigan or Pennsylvania.

Michigan (O+4) - There hasn't been a serious poll that has shown Romney with the lead in the state his father used to govern. Still, the median spread is only 4 points.

 

Pennsylvania (O+5.5) - There also hasn't been a serious poll showing Romney with the lead in Pennsylvania, but there was a Susquehanna College poll that showed him on top, which says more about Susquehanna College than it does about Mitt Romney's chances in Pennsylvania.

The rest of the states will support Barack Obama easily.

________

The senate is different.  Since the night of the first debate, Obama's margin has waned an average of 2.7 points in each of the thirteen states listed above.  But the margin for Democratic senate candidates has mostly remained unchanged, averaging +0.3 in the direction towards Democrats during the same time.  Here are the 14 senate races that will determine the majority in 2013, again ranked according to Republican support in descending order.

North Dakota (R+9) - Before a new poll came out today showing Rick Berg with a 10 point lead over Heidi Heitkamp, Democrats could have been excused for thinking this was going to be a close race.

Nevada (R+5) - Nevada is basically Opposite State.  There will be a lot more cross-ticket voters voting for Romney / Democratic senator than there will be voting for Obama / Republican senator in most other swing states (Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Missouri, Indiana, Arizona maybe).  Nevada will feature more Obama / Heller voters than Romney / Berkley voters. 


















Montana (R+2) - Jon Tester was supposed to be the most easily beatable Democrat out of this year's crop of incumbents, and this is still the case two weeks before the election, but it certainly doesn't mean that this race will be an easy win for Denny Rehberg.


















Indiana (R+1.5) - There have basically been two non-partisan non-internet polls in this race, and they say opposite things. But assuming the latest Rasmussen poll showing Mourdock with a 5 point lead is true, this race will give Republicans their 47th seat in the U.S. Senate. 


















The median poll spread has Democrats winning the rest of the seats, though I don't especially trust it in the case of Arizona.

Arizona (D+1) - In a Senate race featuring the word "pretty", this is an ugly race featuring ugly candidates.  After Richard Carmona's gaffe coincided with Jeff Flake's personal attack ad so perfectly, I'd expect Carmona's numbers to plummet.  If you give this one to Republicans, that puts their total at 48.  But it will be hard for them to find 2 or 3 more seats.


















Virginia (D+2.5) - One of the few races to show a trend similar to Obama's October, Tim Kaine is still polling a couple points higher than Barack Obama, which should keep this seat Democratic.

















Missouri (D+3) - There has been just one poll taken since October 3rd in this close / insane senate race.  This makes no sense to me.  That one poll was performed by the usually Republican-leaning Rasmussen Reports, and it showed an 8-point Claire McCaskill lead. 


















Wisconsin (D+3) - The persistent lead by Tammy Baldwin continues (except for in one Marquette poll).


















Connecticut (D+3) - Chris Murphy continues to lead Linda McMahon, though polling methodology seems to be all over the place as evidenced by the scatter in the thin lines below.



















Massachusetts (D+3) - The trends are all positive for Elizabeth Warren right now.  If Romney pulls off an upset on November 6th, expect a lot of inconsolable Democrats to say "at least Elizabeth Warren won in Massachusetts!" as they cry into their soy lattes.   


















If Republicans are to take control of the Senate, they will have to win at least two and probably three out of the five preceding races (Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Wisconsin, Missouri).  Because they ain't winning any of the next four.

Ohio (D+8) - Sherrod Brown's got this thing on lock.  There has been no consistent movement in the polls since September and no single credible poll showing Josh Mandel with any sort of lead.

















Florida (D+8.5) - Same story in Florida.  Barring a massive October surprise, Bill Nelson's lead is insurmountable two weeks out.


















Pennsylvania (D+9) - Really weird polling in Pennsylvania.  In every other state, the polls are either in agreement with each other or scattered randomly over a large range.  In Pennsylvania there are two distinct groups of pollsters: those who show Tom Smith's support above 45% (maybe could win!) and those who show it below 39% (no chance).  There are no middle-ground pollsters.  Since there are just three pro-Smith pollsters (Rasmussen, Susquehanna, Quinnipiac) and five anti-Smith pollsters (PPP, Siena, Franklin & Marshall, Philadelphia Inquirer and Muhlenberg College sort of), the median poll lies in the anti-Smith camp. 


















Michigan (D+10.5) - The Michigan senate seat has ceased to be on even crazy people's radar.

Jim Rogers: More Popular Than Republicans!

Last night was the first basically uncontested (sorry Newt, sorry Paul-heads) Republican primary since the media declared that Mitt Romney was firmly, finally the inevitable nominee, the first one since Rick Santorum's frothy surge ended not with a blast but with a dribble (obviously I'm talking about his political surge). 

But the primaries did prove one thing: Oklahoma's Jim Rogers is more popular than the Republican Party in Rhode Island.  15,535 people showed up to the polls in Oklahoma to vote for Democrat Jim Rogers.  Only 14,530 people showed up in Rhode Island to vote for Mitt Romney / Ron Paul / Rick Santorum / Newt Gingrich / Buddy Roemer / Uncommitted / Write-in.  This either means Republicans are unenthused and unpopular in New England, or it means that the Jim Rogers Revolution is just a blimp away from the mainstream!

PolitiFact Truth Index, Part 5: That Other PolitiFact Truth Index

This week PolitiFact announced a new feature on their mobile phone app. They developed a chart of general truthiness against time so that trends could be seen more easily. In order to do this, they had to create some way of quantifying their own Truth-o-meter® ratings, so they assigned values to their ratings with positive numbers representing truths and negative numbers representing lies. Then they took the average of the last seven days and charted the results.

The feature is almost exactly like my PolitiFact Truth Index.

What did PolitiFact call this new feature? The PolitiFact Truth Index.

Coincidence? Who knows.

So now when you search for "politifact truth index" in Google, PolitiFact's site comes up first rather than mine. On the other hand, now that the PolitiFact Truth Index is actually a thing, maybe auxiliary search traffic to this site will increase.

Not that any of that actually matters.

There are differences between our methods, PolitiFact and me, but most of them are arcane, with one big exception: PolitiFact's PolitiFact Truth Index doesn't break it down by political party. This is probably in an attempt to avoid any overt semblance of partisanship, because otherwise PolitiFact would have to defend the reason why Democrats have a higher Truth Index value than Republicans, and then they get into the whole debate about selection bias versus actual lying, and then they lose their non-partisan aura which is essential to their reputation as a source for the mainstream media.

I obviously don't have any of those qualms. I just charts 'em as I sees 'em, and I see Republicans lying (although recently the numbers have been evening out, as shown below).




Other differences between the Quibbling Potatoes PolitiFact Truth Index and the PolitiFact PolitiFact Truth Index have more to do with the calculation of points. My points for the six categories of statements in descending truth order are as follows: 1, 1, 0, 0, -1, -1. PolitiFact's are essentially as follows: 1, 0.5, 0, -0.5, -1, -1.5. They also multiply the result by 100 because it just looks cooler that way. And their average is calculated by date that they analyzed the statement, not by the date that the statement was made. So even though PolitiFact claims to be tracking the "ups and downs of political discourse" with its Truth Index, they are really tracking the ups and downs of PolitiFact's choice of statements for the week. There are differences between those two methods as you can see by comparing the chart below to the one above.



PolitiFact's method is so similar to mine that it was really easy to calculate and make a chart based on one of the other methods of quantification that I tried which was based on a 5-4-3-2-1-0 point system. So the chart below represents what PolitiFact's PolitiFact Truth Index would be if they broke their numbers down by political party.



For the week ending July 1, 2011, Republicans had an Index value of -30.43 and Democrats had an Index value of -25.00.

PolitiFact's method makes everyone look a little worse, which is to be expected when three out of the six categories essentially are downgraded by half a point so that Pants-on-fire ratings are 50% worse on the bad side than True ratings are on the good side. But it still shows that, but for the week ending on May 20, 2011, Democrats have scored better than Republicans in every week I've looked at so far.

Michele Bachmann's No Flake, Unfortunately

With merely 16 months to go before the general election in 2012, the field of Republican presidential candidates is coalescing into a smorgasbord of eight or nine hopefuls who will achieve outsized media attention for the next six months before six or seven of them will drop out of the race. One of the strongest candidates, at least according to a poll in Iowa, is Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann. But despite the recent media praise and favorable poll numbers, Chris Wallace of Fox News asked her on his Sunday show if she was "a flake". The prelude to this question was that Bachmann had a well-known reputation for, let's say, stretching the truth into a fact-free porridge of inventive talking points. But my main issue is with the definition of the term "flake", and why an insane-yet-committed Republican would be thought of as a flake.

Bachmann took immediate issue with Chris Wallace's question, calling it "insulting" and later stating how serious she was. And, for once, I have no reason to mistrust Bachmann. The Republican Party has been splitting for the last two years between moderate conservatives and the more right-wing Tea Party conservatives. With the ascendance of the Tea Party, the power center of the Republican Party as a whole has continued to veer right. Ten years ago, someone who was known for speculation that the dollar would be replaced by a multinational currency, who speculated that the Carter administration may have been responsible for a swine flu outbreak, who spread paranoia about the U.S. census, and who was responsible for some of the most egregious lies about the health care system may not have been able to speak for the Republican Party. But the times, they are a-changin'.

But this is all beside the point. Isn't a "flake" someone who sometimes doesn't show up to events they are expected to be at? Given a choice between candidate A who is spending her first official day on the campaign trail in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and made appearances on two national Sunday talk shows the day before her announcement; or candidate B, who is going to skip out on the Iowa caucuses and took a pass on the first real Republican debate: wouldn't candidate B look like the huge flake? How about candidate C who, despite being the assumed front-runner and who was the wealthiest candidate in 2008, will skip the Iowa straw poll in August because it is "an expensive proposition"?

But then, maybe I'm wrong in my interpretation of the term "flake". I was listening to NPR at lunch, and on Here and Now, Jay Newton-Small, congressional correspondant for Time Magazine, stated that Michele Bachmann was going to try to "get away from that bomb-throwing, that flakey type of reputation that she has." Wait, since when does bomb-throwing have anything to do with being a flake? The only connection that comes to my mind was H. Ross Perot in 1992, a bomb-thrower who later went on to quit his campaign despite pretty good poll numbers for a third-party candidate. And unfortunately, I think Michele Bachmann has more staying power than H. Ross Perot.

So now I'm confused. What does "flake" mean again? It's time I turned to that most esteemed and venerated source of terminology: Urban Dictionary. Aha! A flake is "an unreliable person; someone who agrees to do something, but never follows through." I thought so!

Chris Wallace later went on to apologize for his "flake" question for being too insulting. He did not, however, apologize for misinterpreting what a flake is. I'm still waiting, Mr. Wallace.

PolitiFact Truth Index, Part 3: Breakdown by State. Selection Bias?

My attempt with the PolitiFact Truth Index is to sort out some objective measure of the truthiness of statements made by politicians, journalists, activists and advocacy groups. I have shown that the statements made by Republicans tend to be rated false by PolitiFact and the statements made by Democrats tend to be rated true by PolitiFact. I have jumped to the conclusion that this is because Republicans lie more than Democrats do. But the whole process of rating statements on a six-point truth scale necessarily involves a selection bias, a subjective process that picks which statements to select for analysis and which to ignore.

There is a universe of statements out there composed of verifiable facts that are significant to some swath of Americans, newsworthy in some way, and likely to be repeated by others. PolitiFact sees its Truth-o-Meter™ as a somewhat-objective measure of this universe of statements, like dunking a test tube into a lake and analyzing the contents under a microscope back at the lab. This would be highly useful to settle political debates with scientific evidence about the relative truthiness of each party’s statements. But fact-checking isn’t like sampling a lake: each individual would probably have a different definition about what constitutes a newsworthy or significant statement. Even if one assumes that PolitiFact can objectively pass judgment on the truthiness of any given statement, it’s hard to make the case that their statements are fully representative of all political discourse. The lake could be as big as an ocean, and your test tube may not be a representative sample of the water in it.

This is a point made over and over again on the many sites that criticize PolitiFact, sites that are written mostly from a conservative perspective. One of the most thorough smackdowns of PolitiFact since the beginning of this year is the blog PolitiFact Bias whose writers have a beef not only with the selection bias, but also with the rating process, the final rating itself, and the selection of the “lie of the year”. In one post, blogger Bryan White tries to make an objective case for partisan bias (“bolstered by methods of science”) by compiling a list of errors in PolitiFact ratings going back to 2008 and pointing out that the overwhelming majority of them are unfavorable to Republicans or favorable to Democrats. But how does he determine which PolitiFact ratings are errors? He used his own (conservative-leaning) judgment, fraught with even more partisan bias than PolitiFact.

The fact is that it’s pretty easy to claim that PolitiFact has a partisan bias based on anecdotal evidence, but it’s pretty much impossible to prove such a claim unless PolitiFact and a bunch of other fact checking websites analyze a given control set of statements that we the public could use to determine who is more biased, who is more nitpicky, etc. (actually, this would be a great idea).

But until that happens, one can only compare PolitiFact with itself. Specifically with the affiliated state sites that are run by different newspaper editorial boards and may exhibit a degree of independence from the national PolitiFact site. I was interested in knowing which newspapers’ editors exhibited the most political bias towards or against one party or the other. So I averaged the PolitiFact Truth Index across each state by political party and came up with the following results.



PolitiFact Texas and PolitiFact Ohio both exhibited an average Truth Index value above one standard deviation for Democrats, while PolitiFact Wisconsin showed a negative value for its Democrats (the only state with more Democratic lies than truths since the end of February). It could mean that local and state Democratic politicians in Texas and Ohio really do tell the truth more often than their counterparts in other states, but it could also be a measure of partisan bias towards Democrats by the editorial board of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Austin American Statesman.



PolitiFact Georgia and PolitiFact Virginia both exhibited an average Truth Index value above one standard deviation for Republicans, (the only states where Republicans have made more true statements than false ones) while Oregon and Wisconsin’s averages are lower than one standard deviation. Again, this could mean that Georgia’s and Virginia’s Republicans are more honest than everywhere else in the nation. But it could also mean that the Atlanta Journal Constitution and the Richmond Times-Dispatch employ fact-checkers with a Republican bias.

I thought it was interesting that both Wisconsin’s Democratic statements and Republican statements averaged below one standard deviation compared to statements made by fellow Democrats and Republicans in other states. I think this is at least partially due to the heated rhetoric due to the labor fight in that state, and specifically to the local and judicial elections that followed. As I published in Part 2, statements about elections (workings of government) and personal attacks tend to be rated false across the board, no matter which party makes the statement.

How does the national version of PolitiFact rank against the states in terms of the Truth Index?



For Democrats, PolitiFact National averages very close to the state average. For Republicans, PolitiFact National scores much lower than the state average. Since the National branch of PolitiFact tends to analyze statements with a national policy scope more than the state branches do, one can look at this fact a couple of different ways. One is that Republicans with a national scope lie more often than their state and local counterparts do. Or, PolitiFact National has an anti-Republican partisan bias. Or perhaps it could be due to some other factor. Maybe Republican pants-on-fire ratings drive more traffic to the website through links on Facebook and liberal blogs, and PolitiFact’s editors could be motivated to sample more of these statements than other types.

The debate about PolitiFact won’t subside, but I do think that the website is a useful mythbusting tool even if it does have a selection bias.

Next: Politicians versus political commentators