Grading PolitiFact: Clinton and the popular vote

PolitiFact graded Hillary Clinton's recent statement that she was leading the popular vote as "Barely True."

The ruling simply accentuates the problem with PolitiFact's approach to ruling on the truth of political statements.

Recall that PolitiFact graded Barack Obama "False" on his hyperbole respecting the likelihood that the hiring of undocumented workers would be punished. Obama's underlying argument was ignored in the ruling in favor of a focus on lightning strike probabilities. In Clinton's case, the underlying argument is the focus.

Angie Drobnic Holan does a nice job of explaining the intricacies of the issue in limited space. The breakdown occurs with justifying the ruling.

Which brings us to the significant problems with the way Clinton arrives at her winning number.

These problems chiefly have to do with the state of Michigan.

OK, so Obama did not receive any votes in Michigan whereas he certainly would have if he were on the ballot. That does not make Clinton's claim any less true--it makes the underlying argument less true.

This very likely suppressed turnout.

Yeah, and calling Florida early for Gore on the national news probably suppressed turnout, but never in a million years will you hear PolitiFact question the holy tradition that Gore won the popular vote in 2000. PolitiFact would find that claim true in a nanosecond and would probably come up with a superlative version of "True" to counterbalance "Pants on Fire" at the other end of the spectrum. Add to that the fact that turnout in both Michigan and Florida was quite high. The notion that turnout was suppressed is a judgment, not an objective fact.

When Clinton calculates her popular vote lead, there's no way she can get to a winning number unless she counts Michigan, where Obama's name was not on the ballot. The Clinton campaign has said Obama didn't have to take his name off the ballot, which is true, but counting a Clinton victory over Obama when his name didn't appear on the ballot is dubious.

No problem, there. Clinton isn't counting it as a victory over Obama. She's just counting votes cast for Clinton against votes cast for Obama. That seems like a reasonable way to determine the winner of the popular vote, despite any complications to the process courtesy of the states and the Democratic National Committee. Clinton is going by the rules, abetted by her (ahem) mistake in not removing her name from the Michigan ballot. In short, there's nothing really dubious about the vote totals. But there is something dubious about the implicit argument. Clinton is saying something true that is misleading at the same time.

PolitiFact also cites vote totals from caucus states as a problem, but ends up punting away the problem in almost the next breath:

The news Web site RealClearPolitics has developed caucus estimates for Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington, and has applied it to several scenarios involving Michigan:

* If you don't count Michigan, Obama wins the popular vote with or without caucus estimates.

* If you do count Michigan, Clinton wins the popular vote with or without caucus estimates.

* If you count Michigan and award Uncommitted's votes to Obama, then Obama wins with the caucus estimates, and Clinton wins without caucus estimates.

Clearly, regardless of the caucus numbers, Clinton wins the popular vote if her votes from Michigan are counted. Is there any doubt that Clinton objectively received votes in Michigan?
Why would "Uncommitted" votes be awarded to Obama? Did Obama change his name to "Uncommitted" when that vote was taken? Was John Edwards a figment of our imagination?

In the next paragraph, PolitiFact uses the paraphrase of a source to state that Obama could also claim to lead in the popular vote. I'll note that Obama would have real problems with the objective numbers in making that claim. On what basis does he exclude Michigan, or claim votes for "Uncommitted"? In contrast, Clinton has a very simple case based on totaling the votes.

Again, what Clinton stated is perfectly true. And misleading.

For all of these reasons, we find Clinton's argument that she's winning the popular vote to be true only if you consider the messy, real-world results in the light most favorable to Clinton, and for this reason we find her claim Barely True.

For all the reasons I've mentioned above, I find PolitiFact's judgment Barely True.

Think about the contrast I mentioned earlier. Obama is rated "False" for hyperbole while his implicit argument is perfectly true. Clinton is rated "Barely True" (based primarily on her implicit argument) even though her statement is perfectly true.

If PolitiFact were less bold and willing to simply admit that what Clinton said was true and misleading at the same time then their rulings would in turn do less to mislead voters.

The insistent focus on judging political statements on a simple scale forces this outfit into distortion.