You have a point. It would be interesting for you to plot the data, or ask the author to plot the data, with rankings of party members, so we could see whether

You have a point. It would be interesting for you to plot the data, or ask the author to plot the data, with rankings of party members, so we could see whether your hypothesis is true. Hypothesis: Politifact gives more "pants-on-fire" ratings to the leadership of one party than another. If true, then there should be a greater number of e.g. Republicans than Democrats that receive the 'pants-on-fire' rating. Of course, there could be other explanations besides bias even if that result turns out to be true. For example, the Politifact site [1] says that they choose which politicians' statements to validate based on how much press a statement gets. You'd have to somehow show that they're not just giving more high-ranking Repubs 'pants-on-fire' ratings because Repubs are getting more press attention overall for things they say. Gee, I can't think of any Republican candidate that keeps saying things mainly to get free publicity in the press. [1] http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/nov/01/principles-politifact-punditfact-and-truth-o-meter/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/nov/01/...