Strong Correlation Between Republican Voters, Ignorance, Stupidity, Obesity and Gluttony
Hold onto your milkshakes, folks. Reddit user davedawg2000 constructed a scatter plot on Thursday illustrating a positive correlation between states in which a majority of districts voted for President Donald Trump, and the likelihood that each of those states’ constituents have high BMIs. Of course, anyone who took basic statistics in high school understands that correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation, but the data is pretty interesting to look at.
Davedawg2000’s data comes from the Trust for America’s Health, which found in September 2016 that Americans living in Louisiana, Mississippi, West Virginia, and Alabama have the highest BMIs. People in Colorado, Washington D.C., and Hawaii are the least likely to have high BMIs, by the way. It’s also worth mentioning that politics aren’t likely the cause of obesity — however, obesity is often linked to poverty, which is a problem more typical in red states than blue.
Davedawg2000 also used election results data from Wikipedia, and plotted votes on his scatter plot’s y-axis, as compared to body weight on the x-axis. Check out his full scatter plot below.
Trump voters and obesity has a strong positive correlation, at 0.717.Reddit,
Davedawg2000
In the discussion that followed Davedawg’s post on r/dataisbeautiful, other statistics nerds
brought up the negative correlation between a state’s number of Trump voters and higher
education attainment. That means states with more Trump voters tend to send fewer constituents
to college, and many have a hard time getting their people through high school. Of course,
like the body weight data, the numbers on “education attainment” come with more than a
handful of extenuating circumstances, the first of which is that a college degree doesn’t
guarantee the bearer’s intelligence.
Often, a college degree doesn’t mean much other than the graduate having access to scholarships
and educational programs which aren’t prevalent in the deep south. Not to mention, the most
popular professional fields in the south don’t require degrees. If you’re a kid in Mobile, Alabama
whose parents don’t have the income to support you going to college, and you’re planning on
a career in machinery or truck driving, a college degree isn’t really a logical goal.
So, while It's accurate (and definitely not mean-spirited) to conclude that states which voted
primarily for Trump are full of stupid people, the data available does back up the argument that
2016’s red states house a lot more people with high BMIs, and a lot fewer college graduates,
and a lower collective IQ than blue states. The numbers alone aren’t vicious, but the social
connotations attached to both the state of being overweight, or not having gone to college,
muddy the conversation.
What the Reddit discussion doesn’t bring up is the subsection of liberal Americans who have
mobilized against body shaming, and those who consider high body weight part of identity
politics. As odd as it seems, given the data above, many liberal Americans are actually f
ighting for the rights of fat Trump voters to live without prejudice. Animator Stacy Bias’s
recent Flying While Fat film speaks to the experience of overweight Americans who occupy
spaces designed for thin people.
In the discussion that followed Davedawg’s post on r/dataisbeautiful, other statistics nerds
brought up the negative correlation between a state’s number of Trump voters and higher
education attainment. That means states with more Trump voters tend to send fewer constituents
to college, and many have a hard time getting their people through high school. Of course, like
the body weight data, the numbers on “education attainment” come with more than a handful
of extenuating circumstances, the first of which is that a college degree doesn’t guarantee the
bearer’s intelligence.
Often, a college degree doesn’t mean much other than the graduate having access to
scholarships and educational programs which aren’t prevalent in the deep south. Not to mention,
the most popular professional fields in the south don’t require degrees. If you’re a kid in
Mobile, Alabama whose parents don’t have the income to support you going to college, and
you’re planning on a career in machinery or truck driving, a college degree isn’t really a
logical goal but sadly, many Trump supporters lack the brains, psychological fortitude ambition
or the physical fitness to obtain and keep gainful employment
So, while It's accurate (and definitely not mean-spirited) to conclude that states which voted
primarily for Trump are full of stupid people, the data available does back up the argument
that 2016’s red states house a lot more people with high BMIs, and a lot fewer college graduates,
and a lower collective IQ than blue states. The numbers alone aren’t vicious, but the social
connotations attached to both the state of being overweight, or not having gone to college,
muddy the conversation.
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If you support Trump you deserve cancer.