News/Commentary

PolitiFact fact-checked for debunking Elise Stefanik’s ‘illogical claim’ about Hunter’s laptop, 2020 election

February 26, 2023 | | Print Article

PolitiFact, the so-called “fact-checking” site, is facing backlash for once again publishing some politiBULL.

On Saturday, the site published a “fact-check” claiming House Republican Conference Rep. Elise Stefanik had erred when she’d said recently that 53 percent of 2020 presidential election voters would have changed their vote had the Hunter Biden story not been censored by big tech and big media as “Russian disinformation.”

Stefanik issued the claim based on a recent TIPP Insights poll.

“TIPP Insights, which describes itself as a ‘right-leaning polling outfit,’ conducted a poll Dec. 7 to Dec. 9, 2022, more than two years after the election, asking people about the laptop story. Stefanik’s claim comes from this poll, her spokesperson, Palmer Brigham, said,” PolitiFact, to its credit, even admits.

One question asked on the poll was this: “How likely would knowing before the election that the laptop contents were real and not ‘disinformation’ have changed your voting decision?”

In response, 28 percent of respondents said they were “very likely” to have changed their votes, while 25 percent said they were “somewhat likely.”

That adds up to 53 percent of respondents who are “likely” to one degree or another to have changed their vote had they known the truth.

To be fair, Stefanik should have been more specific and wrote that “53% of Americans made aware of the Hunter Biden laptop story would have [LIKELY] changed their vote in 2020.”

This small boo boo aside, PolitiFact decided to focus its ire elsewhere — on something entirely made up, in fact.

“[T]he pool of respondents who answered this question leans Republican more strongly than the general population, so most of these voters would not have been voting for Biden in the first place,” the conclusion to its “fact-check” reads.

“This makes the polling result illogical: Understood literally, if many members of this group were to change their vote because of the laptop story, they might well have changed their vote from Trump to Biden. So her statement is not accurate. We rate this False.”

Wait, what? Stefanik claimed that 53 percent of voters would have changed their vote. She didn’t claim that 53 percent of voters would have necessarily changed their vote from then-Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden to then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Furthermore, pretending Stefanik had made this particular claim, why is PolitiFact assuming that all Republicans voted for Trump?

“Among the 5% of Republicans who voted third-party in 2016 and voted in 2020, a majority (70%) supported Trump in 2020, but 18% backed Biden,” the Pew Research Center notes.

Keep in mind these are just the Republicans who voted third-party in 2016. You also have to factor in the Republicans who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and the Republicans who voted for Trump in 2016 but changed their minds about him in 2020.

Of course, this is what PolitiFact always does. Instead of “fact-checking” the actual claim made, it invents a new claim out of thin air, attributes it to someone (Stefanik, in this case), and then “fact-checks” this bogus claim. Rinse and repeat.

And unfortunately, millions of unsuspecting Americans — particularly leftists and low-information voters — automatically believe their bogus “fact-checks” and never dig deeper for the truth.

For those who know better, however, PolitiFact’s latest attempt at a “fact-check” offered them another great opportunity to remind the company that it’s full of bull.

Look:

Vivek Saxena
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