Three weeks ago, a mere sev­en days from Super Tues­day, Bernie Sanders sat down with the host of MSNBC’s Hard­ball, Chris Matthews, for a con­tentious inter­view about the via­bil­i­ty of his pol­i­cy plat­form and his readi­ness to be com­man­der in chief. The inter­view was a great exam­ple of adver­sar­i­al jour­nal­ism at its best, with Matthews cor­ner­ing Sanders and forc­ing him to get spe­cif­ic about how he would enact his ambi­tious plat­form, and how exact­ly his calls for ​“polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion” would trans­late in prac­tice. Rather than let­ting Sanders dodge and blovi­ate, as politi­cians are wont to do, Matthews repeat­ed­ly pressed Sanders and forced him to answer the ques­tions at hand.

The fact that Matthews is in the tank for Clinton is unsurprising, but shouldn’t be blithely accepted.

Last night, on the eve of the March 15 pri­maries, Hillary Clin­ton sat down with Matthews and received a sim­i­lar grilling from the MSNBC host, who put her feet to the fire and refused to let her wrig­gle out of any ques­tion he asked or dubi­ous claim she made.

Just kid­ding.

Giv­en Matthews’ clear sup­port for the for­mer Sec­re­tary of State dur­ing this cam­paign sea­son, Hard­ball with Clin­ton was most­ly any­thing but. In fact, so dif­fer­ent was Matthews’ treat­ment of the two can­di­dates that I decid­ed to try and quan­ti­fy it.

Matthews’ inter­view with Sanders was notable for the fact that, unlike most inter­view­ers, he repeat­ed­ly inter­rupt­ed Sanders when he felt he was avoid­ing his ques­tions or not get­ting to the point. So I decid­ed to time how long each can­di­date was allowed to speak unin­ter­rupt­ed by Matthews in their respec­tive interviews.

I count­ed an inter­rup­tion as any sig­nif­i­cant encroach­ment on the can­di­dates’ speech, typ­i­cal­ly where they would either have to pause, stop talk­ing entire­ly, repeat a phrase or answer anoth­er ques­tion. I didn’t count applause or laugh­ter, and typ­i­cal­ly paused the stop­watch when this cut into a candidate’s speak­ing time, unless they sim­ply spoke through it. Unless it stopped the can­di­date for a sig­nif­i­cant peri­od of time, I also didn’t count Matthews chim­ing in to agree with the can­di­date, which he did in both inter­views, nor when the can­di­date allowed Matthews a chance to say some­thing. There were also a few instances where Clin­ton and Matthews had a jokey back-and-forth, which I didn’t measure.

I’ll be the first to say this wasn’t a sci­en­tif­ic study. For simplicity’s sake, I didn’t count mil­lisec­onds, which ben­e­fit­ed both can­di­dates’ speak­ing times at dif­fer­ent points. Matthews also has an annoy­ing habit of inter­rupt­ing the inter­vie­wee almost before they’ve said a sin­gle thing, which I auto­mat­i­cal­ly count­ed as one second’s worth of speak­ing. Final­ly, I tried to be gen­er­ous — there was one 11-sec­ond stretch in the Sanders inter­view where Matthews essen­tial­ly talked over him the entire time. I chose to count this as one 11-sec­ond long instance of speech for Sanders.

Even with all this, the results are telling. While Sanders spoke unin­ter­rupt­ed for an aver­age of 19.89 sec­onds, Clin­ton spoke for an aver­age of 32.08 seconds.

This is part­ly because Clin­ton tends to speak for longer in gen­er­al, but that doesn’t let Matthews off the hook — most politi­cians are hap­py to talk and talk in the hopes of avoid­ing tough ques­tion­ing, and Matthews shouldn’t be let­ting them avoid scruti­ny by doing so.

The longest Sanders spoke for with­out stop­ping, whether due to Matthews or not, I mea­sured at 1 minute and 9 sec­onds. This was Sanders’ answer to a soft­ball ques­tion about what it was like to get involved in the 1960s civ­il rights move­ment. (Matthews actu­al­ly chimed in at the begin­ning of his answer, but because he was agree­ing with him and it stayed with­in the gen­er­al flow of the response, I didn’t count it.)

By con­trast, the longest Clin­ton spoke for with­out stop­ping was 2 min­utes and 30 sec­onds, in response to a ques­tion about her sup­port for top­pling Syr­i­an dic­ta­tor Bashar al-Assad.

Clin­ton didn’t answer the ques­tion, say­ing it would ​“be a good out­come” but that ​“Amer­i­cans aren’t going to do it.” She then launched into a long mono­logue about Libya, where she said, among oth­er things, ​“Is Libya per­fect? It isn’t. But did they have two elec­tions that were free and fair where they vot­ed for mod­er­ates? Yes they did.”

Matthews should’ve point­ed out that as recent­ly as Decem­ber of last year, Clin­ton advo­cat­ed a no-fly zone be put in place in Syr­ia (which is essen­tial­ly a dec­la­ra­tion of war) and that Libya, far from being sim­ply not per­fect, became a failed state that has served as a base for ISIS, as well as one of the lead­ing con­trib­u­tors to the cur­rent refugee cri­sis. Instead, he did­n’t chal­lenge her on either of these statements.

I also com­pared the two most con­tentious peri­ods of ques­tion­ing in both can­di­dates’ inter­views. For Sanders, this was the seg­ment that cov­ered how he would achieve any of his pol­i­cy pro­pos­als. For Clin­ton, it was the seg­ment about her hawk­ish­ness on for­eign pol­i­cy — which, to Matthews’ cred­it, he ques­tioned her fair­ly aggres­sive­ly on.

Yet even here, the dif­fer­ence is stark. Sanders’ aver­age speak­ing time in this peri­od was an aver­age of 15.05 sec­onds. For Clin­ton, it was 22.5 seconds.

How long a can­di­date speaks unin­ter­rupt­ed is not the be-all and end-all of an inter­view, but it is indica­tive of Matthews’ atti­tude towards the two can­di­dates. Aside from the ques­tions about her for­eign pol­i­cy and a brief seg­ment on trade (where he allowed Clin­ton to say she only came out against the TPP once she knew what was in it, despite the fact that she helped nego­ti­ate the deal), many of Matthews’ oth­er ques­tions were softballs:

You went to Welles­ley. What would’ve hap­pened if you’d gone to Trump University?

What is the dif­fer­ence between you and [Bill Clinton]?

Tomorrow’s num­bers look good for you in most cas­es. …Do you trust the polls anymore?

You had that under­stand­ing about the needs of peo­ple even though you were a suburbanite?

So you know how tough it is for those peo­ple who don’t have health care yet?

Matthews also launched into a ram­bling, more than 50 sec­ond-long ques­tion where he praised Clin­ton for being ​“pro­tean” in her polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy over the years. Touch­ing on the fact that she had sup­port­ed Bar­ry Gold­wa­ter as a young girl, he called the 1964 Repub­li­can nom­i­nee ​“a very attrac­tive candidate.”

Gold­wa­ter ran against the Civ­il Rights Act and essen­tial­ly kick-start­ed the GOP’s racist ​“South­ern strat­e­gy.” When he won the nom­i­na­tion, promi­nent seg­re­ga­tion­ist and pro­to-Trump George Wal­lace dropped his own pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, declar­ing: ​“My mis­sion has been accomplished.”

The fact that Matthews is in the tank for Clin­ton is unsur­pris­ing but shouldn’t be blithe­ly accept­ed. The ques­tion is, is he more favor­able toward her because his polit­i­cal beliefs match up more close­ly with hers? Or is it because a num­ber of Clin­ton donors are help­ing fund his wife’s Con­gres­sion­al cam­paign? Since Matthews still hasn’t both­ered to dis­close this fact, most view­ers will not get the chance to make up their minds.