PolitiFact: Voters Face Facts

This is the first of a three-part series using PolitiFact truth ratings (with permission) to score the credibility of politicians and pundits. Part two calculated the combined accuracy of claims by presidents and their staffs. Part three scores the veracity of well-known political people.

Update 2021-01-07 with 2020 results. Voters judge politicians by the substance of their statements. Thanks to fact-checkers, we can now judge the accuracy of those statements as well. We can compare competing candidates by measuring their credibility.

PolitiFact has been checking political claims since 2007. As of September 2020, they’ve rated the accuracy of 18,150 statements made by 4,217 organizations and persons. Among the PolitiFact-checked people are 2020 presidential and U.S. Senate candidates.

Using (with permission) PolitiFact truth-ratings, I assigned each candidate a truth-score based on the veracity of their claims. I also looked at past Senate elections to determine if voters tend to pick the more truthful candidate. (They do.)

PolitiFact’s Truth-O-Meter has six levels: True, Mostly True, Half True, Mostly False, False, and the fearsome Pants-on-Fire!. In the tables below, Checks indicates the number of a candidate’s PolitiFact-rated statements. Score is the average of their ratings, calculated to be a number between 0 and 1 (see methodology):

• 1.00
  means all their statements were True.
• 0.00
  means all their statements were False.

PolitiFact scores of 2020 POTUS/VP candidates

Candidate	Party	Checks	Score
Donald Trump	Republican	861	0.22
Mike Pence	Republican	58	0.37
Joe Biden	Democrat	160	0.47
Kamala Harris	Democrat	29	0.47

The next table compares the 2020 U.S. senatorial candidates. There’s a wide credibility differential in several races. As in past years, voters prefer fact over fiction from elected officials (✓ marks the winner, * the incumbent).

PolitiFact scores for 2020 U.S. Senate candidates

Candidate	Party	State	Checks	Score
✓Dan Sullivan*	Republican	AK	5	.20
Al Gross	Independent	AK	0
✓Tommy Tuberville	Republican	AL	1	.00
Doug Jones*	Democrat	AL	5	.45
✓Tom Cotton*	Republican	AR	17	.30
Ricky Dale Harrington Jr.	Libertarian	AR	0
✓Mark Kelly	Democrat	AZ	4	.81
Martha McSally*	Republican	AZ	9	.18
✓John Hickenlooper	Democrat	CO	3	.75
Cory Gardner*	Republican	CO	9	.33
✓Chris Coons*	Democrat	DE	3	.58
Lauren Witzke	Republican	DE	0
✓Jon Ossoff	Democrat	GA	4	.63
David Perdue*	Republican	GA	21	.46
✓Raphael Warnock	Democrat	GA	1	1.00
Kelly Loeffler*	Republican	GA	1	.25
✓Joni Ernst*	Republican	IA	7	.35
Theresa Greenfield	Democrat	IA	1	.75
✓James Risch*	Republican	ID	1	.75
Paulette E. Jordan	Democrat	ID	0
✓Richard Durbin*	Democrat	IL	13	.51
Mark Curran	Republican	IL	0
✓Roger Marshall	Republican	KA	0
Barbara Bollier	Democrat	KA	0
✓Mitch McConnell*	Republican	KY	33	.45
Amy McGrath	Republican	KY	0
✓Bill Cassidy*	Republican	LA	3	.05
Adrian Perkins	Democrat	LA	0
✓Edward Markey*	Democrat	MA	5	.70
Kevin O’Connor	Republican	MA	0
✓Susan Collins*	Republican	ME	3	.50
Sara Gideon	Democrat	ME	1	.25
✓Gary Peters*	Democrat	MI	2	.50
John James	Republican	MI	2	.13
✓Tina Smith*	Democrat	MN	2	.63
Jason Lewis	Republican	MN	0
✓Cindy Hyde-Smith*	Republican	MS	0
Mike Espy	Democrat	MS	0
✓Steve Daines*	Republican	MT	1	.25
Steve Bullock	Democrat	MT	2	.50
✓Thom Tillis*	Republican	NC	9	.36
Cal Cunningham	Democrat	NC	4	.44
✓Ben Sasse*	Republican	NE	1	1.00
Chris Janicek	Democrat	NE	0
✓Jeanne Shaheen*	Democrat	NH	13	.60
Corky Messner	Republican	NH	0
✓Cory Booker*	Democrat	NJ	32	.62
Rik Mehta	Republican	NJ	0
✓Ben Ray Luján	Democrat	NM	0
Mark Ronchetti	Republican	NM	0
✓James Inhofe*	Republican	OK	2	.38
Abby Broyles	Democrat	OK	0
✓Jeff Merkley*	Democrat	OR	15	.73
Jo Rae Perkins	Republican	OR	0
✓Jack Reed*	Democrat	RI	7	.71
Allen Waters	Republican	RI	0
✓Lindsey Graham*	Republican	SC	13	.46
Jaime Harrison	Democrat	SC	0
✓Mike Rounds*	Republican	SD	0
Dan Ahlers	Democrat	SD	0
✓Bill Hagerty	Republican	TN	0
Marquita Bradshaw	Democrat	TN	0
✓John Cornyn*	Republican	TX	34	.54
M.J. Hegar	Democrat	TX	2	.88
✓Mark Warner*	Democrat	VA	22	.61
Daniel Gade	Republican	VA	1	.00
✓Shelley Moore Capito*	Republican	WV	7	.42
Paula Jean Swearengin	Democrat	WV	0
✓Cynthia Lummis	Republican	WY	2	.32
Merav Ben-David	Democrat	WY	0
Notes: The more times a politician was PolitiFact-checked, the more confident we can be the score reflects their overall accuracy. Zero under Checks means PolitiFact has yet to check that pol’s statements. Sources: Wikipedia, PolitiFact.

Next, let’s apply the same scoring matchups to all senate races. Did the most truthful candidate win? Yes, nearly two-thirds of the time (61%) the person with the higher truth-ratings won.

Incumbents were more accurate in their statements than were their challengers. Winners averaged higher truth-ratings than losers.

PolitiFact scores of past senatorial candidates

Group	Candidates	Checks	Score
Incumbents	60	1,343	0.53
Challangers/Open	102	1,636	0.43
Winners	81	2,348	0.52
Losers	61	631	0.42
Democrat Winners	41	661	0.62
Republican Winners	39	1,683	0.40
Democrat	81	906	0.58
Independent	1	80	0.54
Republican	79	1,989	0.35
All	162	2,979	0.47
Checks is the number of times PolitiFact rated statements by Group members.

Might truthfulness be an indicator for forecasting electoral winners? To even guess at that we’d need much more data from many more elections. But it’s comforting to know honesty is both the best policy and good politics, that nice guys/gals often finish first.

(Although this post is nonpartisan, I’ll note that PolitiFact checked claims by GOPs more than twice than those by Dems. Also, the Dems averaged noticeably higher scores.)

The data from the above table flows from all the senate races for which PolitiFact rated at least one statement by each of the two candidates. The graph below lists those matchups, candidates, and their scores. In the 69 elections, voters picked the most (or equally) truthful person 44 times.

The chart does not list all races, only those in which PolitiFact checked both candidates at least once. The ✓ marks the winner, * the incumbent. Next to each candidate is their average PolitiFact score,

0.00

–

1.00

(in parens is their total number of PolitiFact-checks).

Methodology

The above results are from PolitiFact data gathered at the end of September 2020 (spreadsheet). I calculated each person’s score by assigning a number value to each truth-rating level, listed in the tables below, then averaging all their PolitiFact ratings.

PolitiFact ratings as scores

Rating	PolitiFact description	Score
True	The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing.	1.00
Mostly True	The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.	0.75
Half True	The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.	0.50
Mostly False	The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.	0.25
False	The statement is not accurate.	0.00
Pants on Fire	The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.	-0.10
The negative “Pants” number makes below-zero scores possible.

PolitiFact has proven to be an essential tool in making democracy work. If you want to keep politics and facts together, please support PolitiFact (a project of the nonprofit Poynter Institute) with a tax-deductible contribution or membership.

This post updates a 2017 report for RJI. Thanks to Josef Verbanac and Claire Golding for editing and to Aaron Sharockman for PolitiFact permission The top image is from a William Jennings Bryan campaign poster, “Shall the People Rule?” (circa 1900), at the Library of Congress.