Do conservatives lie more than liberals?

[AFTT47]

Too general a question to come up with a solid answer.

For the present time though, the conservatives obviously lie more based on the fact that Trump lies more than any ten other politicians combined.

[bennyboy]

Fuck yeah.

They lie more. Almost every single fucking platform they have is at odds with reality.

Climate change? Lie because oil money.
Gun deaths? Lie because freedumb.
Rape? Say that women have natural defenses against "legitimate" rape.
Trickle down economics? Fucked the middle class, keep doing it, keep lying about it.
Abortion? Lie about the illusion of separation of church and state. The souls of secular babies must be saved by legislation!

I don't know how this thread could even exist. I think the answer is so obvious that anyone who CAN'T immediately see that is a fucking liar. And I include being stupid enough to lie to yourself in that.


/thread

[Cecelia]

Conservatives lie WAY more than Liberals. It's not even close.

I mean Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Donald Trump almost alone lie enough to put Republicans over the edge.

Politifact found that Republicans had 3x more "false" or "Pants on fire' statements than Democrats.

[robvalue]

Based on my experience of politics in the UK, yes.

[Aroura]

It's actually pretty well documented that not only do conservative politicians lie more, but also conservative voters believe more lies.
This makes me wonder how often those politicians also believe what they are saying, meaning they aren't technically "lying", but instead they simply believe something demonstrably incorrect more often than not.  

There is also the issue of a few outliers screwing the averages.  For instance, since Trump and Pence rarely open their mouths without saying something at least partly false, are they (and a handful of others like them) dragging down their entire parties average, while most conservatives don't lie any more than an average liberal politician?  Possibly. 

This isn't just an opinion, though.  I have evidence:

Why conservatives are more susceptible to lies

Conservatives tell twice as many "Pants on Fire" lies, and half agan as many "partial lies" as liberals do

Pretty much every fact checking site will give you the same basic statistics.
And honestly, the psychology behind the why of this is fascinating.


And if you don't buy Politifact then there is this:

Conservatives are more likely to attack factchecking sites than liberals

University of Minnesota political science professor Eric Ostermeier did an analysis of 511 selected PolitiFact stories issued from January 2010 through January 2011, stating that "PolitiFact has generally devoted an equal amount of time analyzing Republicans (191 statements, 50.4 percent) as they have Democrats (179 stories, 47.2 percent)". Republican officeholders were considered by Politifact to have made substantially more "false" or "pants on fire" statements than their Democratic counterparts. Of 98 statements PolitiFact judged "false" or "pants on fire" from partisan political figures, 74 came from Republicans (76 percent) compared to 22 from Democrats (22 percent) during the selected period reviewed.

[paulpablo]

I think that higher up in the game of politics both sides have to lie.  

With the way the game is set up with just two main teams who stand a chance at winning, you have to lie most of the time to fit in with your team and you have to lie to win once you get on the team. Ontop of that, apparently you can lie and get a fuck load of cash to set you up after your job is over too.

I do believe they are lying aswell, in terms of their own personal opinions.  Trump, Hilary and Obama all went from opposing gay marriage to being for gay marriage in their adult lives. Joe Rogan made a joke about this specifically talking about Hillary.  All three of them were deciding if gay marriage was right in their adult lives while most logical 12 year olds could make up their mind about gay marriage being fine within a few minutes.  

If it's because of their religion that they oppose it then it seems very suspicious that they should change their mind about how their religion works, and it seems coincidentally to work in a way that would benefit them politically.

I highly doubt any politician seriously thinks marijuana should still be illegal anywhere. Them having to say they do believe this probably has something to do with who is voting and what they think about marijuana. Old people make up a large portion of voters and maybe most old people still believe marijuana is dangerous, I don't know but something along those lines.

I don't want to join in with the Trump bashing because this site already is the Donald Trump forum as it is, but he does say a lot of crazy shit which probably counts for a few lies in every speech.  He might be a game changer in who lies the most.

I probably agree with more liberal leaning political opinions than conservative but that doesn't really mean that either lies more.  I don't really know overall.

If you go to conservative leaning youtube channels they will focus on liberal lies all day long and it will obviously make it seem like liberals lie more, and the same is true vice versa. I wouldn't really trust either side.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Short answer:

Yes.

Long answer: 

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.

Boru

[julep]

Yes, at least in the last 40 years or so.  And some seem to have convinced themselves it's a virtue.

[henryp]

I think a big moment for lying, was Obama's "If you like your doctor, you can keep them" statement.   I like Obama.  He seems like a decent enough fellow with good intentions.  Other people like him even more.

So when someone that highly regarded just blatantly lies like he did, I think the expectation for any sort of truth in politics was put to rest.

That doesn't make sense.  If his intentions were good as you say and he simply failed to predict how it would come out, then he didn't deliberately deceive anyone - hence no lie.  Not everything said that turns out not to be false was a lie.

I think people with good intentions, or as good of intentions as you can have and still become president, come to recognize that misleading the masses with lies and misrepresentations is the cost of doing business.  I give Obama more credit than you do in terms of knowing what his healthcare bill actually did, I guess.  Maybe his aides all lied to him.  But in the end, he never admitted being wrong.  He just claimed he said/meant something else.  

http://www.politifact.com/personalities/...ants-fire/

[robvalue]

The next question is: do conservatives ever not lie?