The Truth-O-Meter on 2016 Presidential Candidates

[Klippy]

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. :)

Candidate Breakdown

​

Jeb Bush

True (24%)(11)
Mostly True (26%)(12)
Half True (17%)(8)
Mostly False (26%)(12)
False (4%)(2)
Pants on Fire (2%)(1)​

Interestingly, Jeb has tied for Mostly True/False. Despite that, he's told 31 truths to 15 lies - 67% of his statements are "true". Not bad when you compare him to the other current Republican frontrunner.

Donald Trump

True (0%)(0)
Mostly True (6%)(2)
Half True (10%)(3)
Mostly False (13%)(4)
False (48%)(15)
Pants on Fire (23%)(7)​

Donald has told 5 truths to 26 lies. He also has a pretty high Pants on Fire record. Yikes. 17% of his statements are true.

Hillary Clinton

True (32%)(37)
Mostly True (19%)(22)
Half True (20%)(23)
Mostly False (17%)(19)
False (10%)(11)
Pants on Fire (2%)(2)​

Hillary has a higher number of statements thanks to her history as Secretary of State and her first presidential run. Her fact-checking goes back to 2007! Her 82 truths to 32 lies is still fairly impressive, though roughly half of her most recent fact-checks were false. 71% of her total statements are true.

Bernie Sanders

True (21%)(5)
Mostly True (33%)(8)
Half True (21%)(5)
Mostly False (8%)(2)
False (17%)(4)
Pants on Fire (0%)(0)​

Bernie's record is pretty darn good when you consider his history in Congress dates back to 1990. He's probably only been fact-checked recently since his bid for the Democratic nomination, but his 18 truths to 6 lies is still impressive. 75% of his statements are true.

Martin O'Malley

True (0%)(0)
Mostly True (0%)(0)
Half True (70%)(7)
Mostly False (20%)(2)
False (10%)(1)
Pants on Fire (0%)(0)​

Martin is a Democratic candidate, only recently announced, so his low fact-checks is expected. I'm not sure it'd be fair to compare him to the others with only 10 total checks, but 70% of his statements are true here.

Rand Paul

True (24%)(10)
Mostly True (20%)(8)
Half True (22%)(9)
Mostly False (10%)(4)
False (20%)(8)
Pants on Fire (5%)(2)​

Rand's record isn't the worst out there, but he's still got some problems. It's somewhat surprising he's had so many lies, but his truth count still outweighs the lies by 27 to 14. 65% of his statements are true.

Marco Rubio

True (17%)(16)
Mostly True (24%)(23)
Half True (21%)(20)
Mostly False (22%)(21)
False (15%)(14)
Pants on Fire (2%)(2)​

Marco has a pretty extensive list of fact-checks, which is great, as we have a pretty broad picture of things. 59 truths to 37 lies. 61% of his statements are true.​

Honesty Rankings

All of the frontrunner candidates are pretty close in honesty overall, save Donald Trump. None of them scream "honest" as easily as someone with an 80% or higher, but these are politicians we're talking about! Compare all of them to Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, and a few others and you get an interesting look as well.

75% - Bernie Sanders
74% - Barack Obama (565 fact-checks)
71% - Hillary Clinton
70% - Martin O'Malley*
68% - Joe Biden (69 fact checks)
67% - Jeb Bush
65% - Rand Paul
61% - Marco Rubio
57% - Nancy Pelosi (28 fact-checks)
54% - Mitch McConnell (24 fact-checks)
50% - Harry Reid (20 fact-checks)
46% - John Boehner (69 fact-checks)
45% - Sarah Palin (61 fact-checks)
17% - Donald Trump​

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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!

 

[Esper]

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

 

[Her]

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

 

[Pinkie-Dawn]

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?

 

[Her]

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?

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.

 

[Pinkie-Dawn]

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.

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.

 

[Her]

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