Fat Headed Voters?
Ogged links a correlation graph showing that, as obesity level increased, so did propensity to vote Republican in 2000. As Kevin Drum notes, “Yes, yes, I know there’s an underlying cause. Probably income, or socioeconomic level, or something. But still. Weird.”
Weird indeed. Of course, since these are self-reported data and we’re talking about the 2000 election, it may simply be that a lot of Democrats –especially in certain parts of Florida– didn’t understand the question.
Er, anyone note that the correlation graph came off a French website? Not that that means anything.
Or that the correlation is completely spurious. With all the data out there, and all the people downloading it and looking at it, we are bound to get some bogus correlations that are statistically significant.
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