[vinay427]

1. 51% and 59% aren't "similar" on such a large scale.

2. The vagueness of Trump's statement allows for far more misinterpretation, which it is his responsibility to avoid in order to be factual. Sanders mentions a specific age range of 17 to 20, which the study that his campaign later referenced was looking at.

3. As you may know, these "rulings" were clearly not at the two different extremes. Source: http://www.politifact.com/about/

[jnordwick]

If you read the two pages, it is pretty bad. The fact checkers point out the same BLS numbers for each, but then go on to expand into areas Sanders was actually less clear on. They gave him a huge benefit of the doubt to using the think tank numbers, but then they don't apply those same numbers to Trump.

[dragonwriter]

> They gave him a huge benefit of the doubt to using the think tank numbers

It's not "benefit of the doubt" when you contact someone and ask for the basis of their claim and they provide it, and it matches the claim numerically quite specifically but the terminology used is still misleading and so you dock for that.

> but then they don't apply those same numbers to Trump.

Trump's camp didn't say that they were referring to those numbers, and their claim doesn't match those numbers. The fact checkers actually go out of their way to find another labor statistic that approximately matches Trump's numbers (but which is not the unemployment rate), which seems to be the entire basis for rating the claim only Mostly False false rather than simply False, which is an example of benefit of the doubt.

[jnordwick]

> It's not "benefit of the doubt" when you contact someone and ask for the basis of their claim and they provide it,

Of course not, but now that they knew about that data, it should have also applied equally to Trump's claim. They are trying to see who can debate it better or provide better numbers. They should use the same set of facts to judge everybody.

The fact checkers are incredibly biased. There is a Repub one out there does does the same. If you think they two aren't even slightly biased, then you probably drank too much of the Cool-Aid already.

[dragonwriter]

> but now that they knew about that data, it should have also applied equally to Trump's claim.

But Trump's claimed number doesn't match that data either (nor has Trump claimed that was the intended referent.) It can be interpreted to approximately match a different potential measure of workforce participation (that is even less like an unemployment rate as usually understood) that the fact checkers went out of their way to find, which is why it is rated merely "Mostly False", rather than flatly False.

> They should use the same set of facts to judge everybody.

But the two claims aren't the same, and do not have the same relation to the facts.

[jnordwick]

They should have used that institutes data for both. I'm saying he should have been adjudicated as correct, but was abut the same as Sanders, may slightly more hyperbolic, but not enough to dock him that much.

At the very least they should have made a reference to the study that Sander's team brought up and said why it didn't apply.

The biggest issue is that this isn't an isolated incident. That fact checker routinely errors on the Dem side. If this was one of many more balanced cases this would be different.

[srssays]

They are not only similar but indiscernible. There is no single definition of "unemployment", therefore there is no single unemployment percentage.