PolitiFact Georgia, PolitiMath and the gender pay gap

On April 22, 2015, PolitiFact Georgia found it "Mostly False" that women make only 78 percent of what men make for doing the same work.

PolitiFact Georgia reported that the claim, from a Buzzfeed video, based its claim on statistics that, among other faults, did not bother to ensure that the men and women were doing the same work.

At Zebra Fact Check I've published an in-depth treatment of the way mainstream fact checkers mishandle the gender pay gap. But here we'll look narrowly at how PolitiFact Georgia applies a "Mostly False" rating to a gross exaggeration. Our "PolitiMath" stories explore the relationship between percentage error and PolitiFact's ratings, so PolitiFact Georgia's story makes a good subject.

PolitiFact's highest estimate of the wage gap after controlling for the type of job and some other factors was about 7 percent:

(T)he American Association of University Women that controlled for college major, occupation, age, geographical region, hours worked and more, and found there was still a 7 percent wage gap between male and female college grads a year after graduation.

Using that high-end estimate, the Buzzfeed video exaggerated by no less than 214 percent. There's precedent for liberals receiving ratings of "Mostly False" or better for exaggerations that large and larger. On the other hand, PolitiFact Wisconsin gave a state Democrat a "False" rating for an exaggeration of 114 percent.

At least we know Buzzfeed's exaggeration is not the largest to receive a rating of "Mostly False" or higher.

If anyone can find a statement from a Republican or conservative where a figure exaggerated by more than 100 percent received a rating of "Mostly False" or higher from PolitiFact, we'd love to hear about it. We haven't turned up anything like that yet.

Congressional pay raise update

Thanks to PolitiFact Georgia, we have another piece of evidence that PolitiFact prefers Democrats.

Partisan.

We pointed out in October 2012 that PolitiFact found it true that Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.) had raised his own pay a number of times while in Congress.  In contrast, PolitiFact Ohio found it false that Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) had raised his own pay a number of times while in Congress.  Their circumstances were similar.  The rulings contradict each other.

PolitiFact Georgia sees things mostly PolitiFact Ohio's way.  It's "Mostly False" that Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) raised his own pay.  Hey!  A Republican got the benefit of the doubt this time!  But it's not that simple.  Blame for the "Mostly False" claim goes to Kingston's Republican primary challenger, David Perdue.

So, on essentially the same claim, PolitiFact has put a "False" and a "Mostly False" on Republican report cards, and a "True" on the report card for the Florida Democratic Party (the latter claim was a compound claim where both halves were found true).

If Kingston wins the primary, it will be interesting to see if any Democrats pick up this line of attack.  First, will PolitiFact Georgia notice?  Second, what rating will result?