Election Day fast approaches. A few remain undecided. The majority have decided, and look for any last bits of manure to fling at the other side. In the era of fact checking websites, a candidate's factuality has become important to a lot of people, including me.
That's why, earlier this week, I introduced Malark-O-Meter to the world (well...more like only 500 people in the world). I statistically analyzed fact checker report cards from Truth-O-Meter and The Fact Checker to compare the factuality of the 2012 presidential and vice presidential candidates overall, and during the debates that had happened so far. I promised I'd get back to you on the third debate, and with a summary of how the two parties did in the debates overall, compared to one another, and to their usual selves.
Unless Bidama and Rymney (or is it Obiden and Romyan?) blast each other in the next few weeks as much as they have in the last year, this is probably my final 2012 election malarkey analysis until Election Day. This is the one of the most comprehensive, sophisticated, and detailed analyses of the 2012 election presidential candidates' factuality.
Share it with your friends. Discuss its results. Debate its merits. Tell me precisely why you think I'm full of shit. Supersize the histograms and paste them to brick walls like you're Shepard Fairey. Because this stuff matters. It matters because the facts matter. It matters because we should understand how confident we can be in our judgments about people.
Enough histrionics. Let's get to the science. If you've never been here before, quickly skim how I calculate the malarkey score and how I do my statistical comparisons before continuing. If you read my last 2012 presidential campaign update, not much has changed. So you might want to scroll down to my analysis of the third debate, and the debates as a whole.
To see the analysis, complete with data visualizations, go to Malark-O-blog, where I originally published this work.