Organizing for America | Dan Luther's Blog: Obama, McCain, and where each stand on the Truth

Obama, McCain, and where each stand on the Truth

By Dan Luther - Jul 11th, 2008 at 11:38 am EDT

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There are some very good sites out there that most people should look at with some regularity.

For those interested in polling, I think the best site is http://fivethirtyeight.com, which is a web site run by baseball stats phenom Nate Silver, who uses his statistics experience from baseball to analyze the presidential elections, gaining national attention when he correctly outperformed every single pollster in America by predicting Hillary Clinton would carry Indiana by two points while losing N. Carolina by 17. Here's a NewsWeek snippet:

"Silver, 30, is already celebrated among ball fans for inventing something called PECOTA. Developed while the University of Chicago econ alum slogged through a post-collegiate consulting gig—"I'm used to not sleeping," he tells NEWSWEEK—PECOTA is now recognized as the most accurate system for forecasting how athletes and teams will perform in the future (down to the number of singles). In 2007, Silver's algorithm enraged at least half of Chicago when it said the White Sox—2005 champs—would post a 72–90 record. Turned out PECOTA was exactly right."

Another site of interest is http://politifact.com. This is maintained by the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly. Here's their statement of purpose:

"PolitiFact is a project of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly to help you find the truth in the presidential campaign. Every day, reporters and researchers from the Times and CQ will analyze the candidates' speeches, TV ads and interviews and determine whether the claims are accurate."

I see a lot of McCain/Obama references with a "Truth-O-Meter" rating, and I started to see some "trends". Just to confirm my suspicions, I performed a bit of analysis of the statements that PolitiFact rates from both candidates, analyzing those as "True" (combining the categories "True" and "Mostly True") and "False" (combining "Barely True, "False" and "Pants on Fire").

Of the 81 statements by Obama and the 73 statements by McCain rated by PolitiFact, Senator Obama is "True" 53.1% of the time, while he is "False" 24.7%. Senator McCain is "True" 45.2% of the time, while he is "False" 39.7% of the time.

I think we're all adult enough to both know and accept that politicians are, by and large, not the most trustworthy bunch.

But which candidate is true more often than he is false? According to one independent source, that person is Senator Obama.

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