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FactCheck Blasts McCain Spanish Ad—But Figures Differ. Who’s Right?

Posted Jul 8, 2008 by William March

Updated Jul 8, 2008 at 05:25 PM

FactCheck.org says a Spanish-language ad by John McCain, running in Florida, is inaccurate—but the questions appear to result from differences between state and federal figures on Florida exports.

The ad, in FactCheck’s words, “aims to show Florida would benefit from the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, which he supports. But every number in the ad is wrong, except one,” and that one, it says, is an unproveable prediction, not a factual assertion.

FactCheck is a non-profit, non-partisan watchdog group that researches the factual accuracy of political advertising and claims, run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

According to their researchers, the ad overstates the amount of exports Florida sends to Latin America, the proportion of Florida’s total exports that go there, and the amount that goes to Colombia.

The ad accurately reports a prediction of how many jobs the Colombian trade agreement would produce, from an advocacy group that favors the agreement, FactCheck says.

The FactCheck critique is based on figures from the U.S. Department of Commerce, available here.

But the McCain campaign, asked about the FactCheck critique, responded with differing figures from Enterprise Florida, the state’s official economic development agency—which you can see here.

According to the state figures cited by the campaign, there is no inaccuracy.

Here’s FactCheck’s post, with the ad script.

We’ll continue to try to straighten out who’s right, if that can be done.