The election process is in full swing at this point, and it’s fair to say that I pay attention. I have found one of the best tools to sort the political pandering from the honest truth. And I’m feeling nice today, so I’m going to share it with you.
Politifact.com may be the greatest websites known to the internet (with the exception of the UI Memes page). It’s a political fact checking website started by the Tampa Bay Times that takes statements made by politicians, newscasters, and pundits and tells you if they are true or not.
The reason why Politifact is such quality site is that it allows the readers to see if an assertion made by fact-givers is true or complete crap. It’ll rate everything from whether or not Mitt Romney actually drove to Canada with a dog strapped to the roof of the car, to the popular assertion that only 10% of Barack Obama’s cabinet has private sector experience.
Now that it’s campaign season and everyone is touting their accomplishments and flinging dung about the other candidates, it’s important now, more than ever, that statements are verified before being accepted as gospel.
Politifact rates statements on a six-level basis: true, mostly true, half true, mostly false, false-my absolute favorite-and pants on fire. These are fairly straight forward. True means that the statement is a true one, half true means it’s mostly right, but has some flaws, and Pants on fire means the statement is so ridiculous it’s farcical.
What I’m going to do is show you the current candidate’s scores, and compare their percentage of true and false statements. (I’m going to give the candidates a break and count “half true” on the “true” side of the scale, because politics needs more optimism.)
True: 244
False:98
Percentage: 71% True, 29% False
Ratio: 2.5 truths to ever falsity
True: 70
False: 33
Percentage: 68% True, 32% False
Ratio: 2.1 truths to every falsity
True: 12
False: 12
Percentage: Split 50%-50%
Ratio: One truth for every falsity
True: 21
False: 32
Percentage: 40% True, 60% False
Ratio: 1.5 falsities for every truth
True: 20
False: 12
Percentage: 63% True, 37% False
Ratio: 1.7 truths for every falsity.
If we rank them from least full-of-shit to most, we have: 1. Barack Obama, 2. Mitt Romney, 3. Ron Paul, 4. Rick Santorum, and dead last 5. Newt Gingrich.
Now, it must be noted that, clearly, not every statement each candidate makes has been rated. But this does give you a quick introduction of how truthful a candidate is when making statements.
If this isn’t enough information for you-and even if it is-I encourage you to go to Politifact.com and check out the website’s ratings in more depth.
If you find any stories you like, Tweet them at @TheHookupIC with the hashtag #Politifact.
Featured image from: www.inquisitr.com
All other images from: politifact.com
Staff