Americans are too fat.
But are Republicans fatter than Democrats?
To settle this question, we could download voter rolls and DMV files from all 50 states plus the District of Columbia, and then link and sort by party registration and total poundage.
It would be a major computing job, not cheap, and in the end it might flounder on issues of data accessibility and integrity: Many states, including California, are reticent about making DMV files public. And who tells the truth about his or her weight when renewing a driver’s license, anyway?
Meanwhile, there’s Bob Webster of Pryor, Okla. – “Vision statement: I think I see it!” – creator of the “More Junkmail from Bob” e-mail compendium. His posts sometimes feature interesting photos of pilots bailing out of airplanes. But recently, Webster overlaid a report on the obesity epidemic by the Trust for America’s Health [PDF] onto state-by state voting trends.
The overlay shows that nine “out of the 10 of the states with the highest percentage of overweight people are 'red states," while all 10 of the least overweight states are "blue states," Webster writes.
“There's probably a reason for that, but I have no clue what it is,” he adds.
Bob Webster graphic
What about California?
The Watchblog recently featured a post by Joanna Lin on a UCLA study of obesity in the Golden State, which included county-by-county data.
Overlaying voter registration statistics from the Secretary of State, we find that of the five counties in California where skinny people are most prevalent, four are Democrat (San Francisco, Marin, Sonoma* and Santa Cruz) and one is Republican (Orange).
But among the five counties where UCLA says obesity is worst, four are Democrat (Merced, Imperial, Fresno and Lake) and only one is Republican (Kings.)
The whole thing looks like this.
| County or county group | %OBESE | RANK | PARTY |
| Merced | 29.6 | 1 | D |
| Imperial | 29.0 | 2 | D |
| Kings | 27.1 | 3 | R |
| Fresno | 26.3 | 4 | D |
| Lake | 26.1 | 5 | D |
| Yuba | 26.1 | 6 | R |
| Kern | 25.6 | 7 | R |
| San Joaquin | 25.6 | 8 | D |
| Madera | 25.4 | 9 | R |
| Monterey | 25.3 | 10 | D |
| Sutter | 25.3 | 11 | D |
| San Bernardino | 24.9 | 12 | D |
| Stanislaus | 24.8 | 13 | D |
| Tehama, Glenn, Colusa | 24.3 | 14 | D |
| Tulare | 23.9 | 15 | R |
| Del Norte Siskiyou, Lassen, Trinity, Modoc, Plumas, Sierra | 22.7 | 16 | R |
| Solano | 22.5 | 17 | R |
| Humboldt | 22.0 | 18 | D |
| Sacramento | 21.8 | 19 | D |
| Mendocino | 21.7 | 20 | D |
| Riverside | 20.9 | 21 | R |
| Shasta | 20.8 | 22 | R |
| Contra Costa | 20.4 | 23 | D |
| Los Angeles | 20.1 | 24 | D |
| All | 19.3 | 25 | D |
| Butte | 18.9 | 26 | R |
| Yolo | 18.6 | 27 | D |
| El Dorado | 18.3 | 28 | R |
| Napa | 17.7 | 29 | D |
| Ventura | 17.5 | 30 | D |
| Alameda | 17.4 | 31 | D |
| San Mateo | 17.4 | 32 | D |
| Santa Barbara | 17.2 | 33 | D |
| Tuolumne, Calaveras, Amador, Inyo, Mariposa, Mono, Alpine | 16.7 | 34 | R |
| San Diego | 16.5 | 35 | R |
| San Luis Obispo | 16.3 | 36 | R |
| Placer | 15.7 | 37 | R |
| Nevada | 15.6 | 38 | R |
| Santa Clara | 15.5 | 39 | D |
| Santa Cruz | 15.2 | 40 | D |
| Orange | 14.8 | 41 | R |
| Sonoma | 14.1 | 42 | D |
| Marin | 11.8 | 43 | D |
| San Francisco | 11.5 | 44 | D |
Former California Gov. Leland Stanford, a Republican, was a big man, but he served during the Civil War. More recent Republican governors have been relatively buff – Ronald Reagan, the former actor, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the one-time superstar body builder. Recent Democratic governors – Jerry Brown, and his protégé Gray Davis – were downright skinny.
*This update corrects an earlier version that misidentified Sonoma as predominantly Republican.
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