If you've never checked out PolitiFact and their Truth-O-Meter, you're certainly missing out on an interesting fact-checking website on all things political. Oftentimes we hear presidential candidates in America spouting out ridiculous numbers or statistics and you can't help but ask, "Is that true?" Well PolitiFact checks out statements made by politicians and verifies their accuracy. They are independent fact-checkers, so they cover statements made by Republicans, Democrats, and in-between.

In the current political climate and with elections coming soon, I thought it'd be interesting to check the "Truth-O-Meter" of many of the presidential candidates. The scales of truth go from True to Pants On Fire, indicating a complete truth or a complete lie. Here's a handful of candidates for the 2016 presidential elections and a few bonus ones for comparison. :)

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The truth is that you should be looking into your candidates when you're ready to vote. Clearly nobody's perfect and accepting facts at face value leads to trouble and doing your research gets you better informed on the candidates! Hope you enjoyed looking into some of the candidates a bit more! Also take a look at the "True" versus "False" percentages. I used total truths versus total lies, but another good indicator would be seeing how many truths are complete truths against how many lies are complete lies.

Of note: when checking into these, some of the fact-checked people had additional articles and fact-checks added under their name. The percentages and quantities of facts checked may be off slightly as a result!

It's worth noting that PolitiFact isn't without bias (or error, depending on how you want to look at it).

For comparison, two statements with the same rating:

BERNIE SANDERS
"We have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth."
Rated: Mostly False
Reason: Israel and Mexico have higher rates

JEB BUSH
"ISIS didn't exist when my brother was president. Al-Qaida in Iraq was wiped out when my brother was president."
Rated: Mostly False
Reason: A lot of changes in name and power

One can look at either and see reason to view them as more or less true. Do Israel and Mexico count as "major" countries? If one means to say that the current organization called ISIS is a recent identity wouldn't it be a true statement? A lot goes toward what the underlying meaning or implication or point of a statement. Personally, I wouldn't put both statements on the same level of truthfulness given that one is being said to say, essentially, that America has high childhood poverty rates (which is does), and the other is essentially saying that big terrorist organizations didn't exist when Bush was president (which isn't exactly true).

What you get when you read more than the summaries is probably more nuanced, but I don't think many people are going to do that. (I didn't, at least not on these two examples.) But for all my criticisms I think it's a much better alternative to many news websites which often have their own stronger biases (either toward one political side, or against third party candidates, or whatever).

TL;DR take Politifact with a grain of salt, but be glad someone is trying to do what they're doing

Question: does the site make a point about 'Bigger Lies'/lies that have more gravitas or does it treat all lies as equal?

I'm quite surprised that Hillary Clinton is high up despite her bad rep from the internet community for being one of those politicians who believe violent video games causes real life violence, and I expected much worse from Jeb Bush due to his relation to the other Bush. Could it be because he's the more honest one?

Pinkie-Dawn said:

I'm quite surprised that Hillary Clinton is high up despite her bad rep from the internet community for being one of those politicians who believe violent video games causes real life violence, and I expected much worse from Jeb Bush due to his relation to the other Bush. Could it be because he's the more honest one?

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Honey, a common theme throughout many of your posts is your belief that the internet community (mainly big sites like Reddit and co) holds a lot more sway over common thought than is actually true, and your subsequent surprise when you find out this doesn't extend into, well, real life. It's just interesting to me that you give internet communities a lot more credit than they are due when it comes to influencing the world.

God said:

Honey, a common theme throughout many of your posts is your belief that the internet community (mainly big sites like Reddit and co) holds a lot more sway over common thought than is actually true, and your subsequent surprise when you find out this doesn't extend into, well, real life. It's just interesting to me that you give internet communities a lot more credit than they are due when it comes to influencing the world.

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Because social media has become a powerful tool for everyone to voice their thoughts on certain subjects; it's how the Egyptian Revolution occurred a few years ago, because of the people using the internet to plan their rebellion, and how movies had to change some things, because of initial backlash from the internet community. Presidential candidates aren't safe from the community either if either of them make one wrong move.

Give me a minute, I'll make another thread for this.