RealClearPolitics

In a 2001 article for Princeton Alumni Weekly noted that "The articles selected invariably demonstrate McIntyre and Bevan's political bent, about which they are unabashedly forthcoming." McIntyre said, "I'm not really a die-hard Republican because my interests are less on social issues, more on taxing and spending. ... But I definitely don't want the government telling me what to do with my property... Nevertheless, any political junkie—even a liberal—would enjoy our site because the topics we choose are current."[6]

In a 2003 interview with the conservative magazine Human Events, McIntyre described the philosophy behind the website as based on "freedom" and "common-sense values"; Bevan said that the website's owners shared the common conservative belief that the mainstream media was biased "against conservatives, religious conservatives, [and] Christian conservatives".[3]

In a 2004 article for Time, Patrick Stack described the website's commentary section as "right-leaning".[14]

In a 2008 interview with the Chicago Tribune, McIntyre said, "We're trying to pull together the best political stories, op-eds, news analyses, editorials out there. The proliferation of content is enormous. Part of what we're trying to do is distill it in a clear, simple way for people who don't have hours to spend searching the Net".[15] In 2009, RealClearPolitics was described as a weblog "in the conservative pantheon" by Richard Davis.[16][17]

During the 2008 elections, The Wall Street Journal repeatedly referred to RealClearPolitics as "nonpartisan".[18][19] The New York Times referred to its polling practice as a "nonpartisan tally."[20]

The 2012–2013 edition of academic text Cengage Advantage Books: American Government and Politics Today, Brief Edition describes the site as being run by conservatives, and containing "opinion pieces from multiple media sources".[21]

An October 2019 article in The Daily Beast reported that RealClear Media manages a Facebook page of "far-right memes and Islamophobic smears." Anand Ramanujan, Chief Technology Officer for RealClear Media, responded that the company created the website that was affiliated with the Facebook page "as part of an effort to understand the flow of traffic from social media—particularly Facebook—to political websites."[22]

Since 2017, when a large number of its journalists were fired, RealClearPolitics has had a rightward, pro-Trump turn.[10] The website published articles of its own, as well as promoted articles by other conservative websites, which pushed conspiracy theories about Trump's opponents.[10] After Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election and Donald Trump refused to concede, Real Clear Politics published stories that made false claims of fraud in the election.[10]

Real Clear Politics heavily promotes content by The Federalist, a right-wing site which draws funding from the same pool of donor money as Real Clear Politics.[10]

In 2016, RealClearInvestigations was launched,[23] backed by foundations that promote right-wing views, such as the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation and Sarah Scaife Foundation.[24] In 2019, the site published an article by a conservative author, Paul Sperry, containing the supposed name of a U.S. intelligence officer who blew the whistle on the Trump–Ukraine scandal.[24] The article's publication came as part of a month-long effort by Trump allies on media and social media to "unmask" the whistleblower, whose identity was kept confidential by the U.S. government, in accordance with whistleblower protection (anti-retaliation) laws.[24] Most publications declined to reveal the whistleblower's identity; RealClearInvestigations' editor defended the site's decision to publish the article.[24]