News flash: Republicans Lie More Than Democrats

…And The Credibility Gap Is Widening

By Kerry-Anne Mendoza

The nonpartisan Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University has released findings from a new study that reveal Republicans are significantly more likely to lie than Democrats.

This isn’t the first time such a study has been completed.  The University released a study last May which found Republicans were three times as likely to lie than Democrats.

But what this study distinguishes two very important trends.

1. Republicans more likely to lie than Democrats.
2. The credibility gap between Republicans and Democrats is actually widening during Obama’s presidency.

Using data gathered by Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-check site PolitiFact.com, the study compares the veracity of 100 statements involving factual claims made by the parties at different periods through the lifetime of the Obama Whitehouse.

ent Obama’s second term — 46 of the claims were made by Democrats, and 54 were made by Republicans. While 32% of Republican claims were “false” or “pants on fire,” just 11% of the Democratic claims were rated as such.  Furthermore, a paltry 11% of Republican statements were found “entirely true,” compared to 22% on the Democratic side.

This means almost 1 in 10 things that Republicans stated as facts during this period were likely complete fairy tales.

Or, as CMPA President Dr. Robert Lichter put it:

“While Republicans see a credibility gap in the Obama administration, PolitiFact rates Republicans as the less credible party.”

But while Republicans have been breaking every code of conscience in efforts to link Obama to a series of scandals, they have actually widened that credibility gap, their percentage of false claims rising to 60%.

PolitiFact editor Bill Adair responded to the study in an email to Politico’s Dylan Byers:

PolitiFact rates the factual accuracy of specific claims; we do not seek to measure which party tells more falsehoods.

The authors of this press release seem to have counted up a small number of our Truth-O-Meter ratings over a few months, and then drew their own conclusions.

We’ve rated more than 7,000 statements since we started in 2007. We are journalists, not social scientists. We select statements to fact-check based on our news judgment — whether a statement is timely, provocative, whether it’s been repeated and whether readers would wonder if it is true.

So, it’s official: Republicans lie more than Democrats…and their credibility is dwindling away over time.

Author Kerry-Anne Mendoza is a writer and activist. After a career as a management consultant holding senior positions in Banking, Health and Local Government - she gave it all up to live in a tent at Occupy London and has been writing ever since. She is based in the UK.