Obama Did Better In Top Chef-Loving States

Maybe there really was something to all those food-based election polls after all. OK, probably not, but once the votes were tallied and the election data analyzed, one thing became clear: President Obama did best in the states where people are most interested in Top Chef.

The Atlantic's Philip Cohen—a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park—put election vote tallies by state into Google Correlate to see which Google searches most closely mirrored the election results. It turns out that a map of the U.S. depicting the ratio of Obama votes to Romney votes in each state looks surprisingly like a map of the U.S. showing how often people in each state Google "Top Chef." 

It could be a coincidence, of course. Other Google searches that matched the vote pattern included "Mos Def" and "itchiness." But fully eight out of the top 100 Google searches that matched the voting pattern were about Top Chef.

The Braiser notes that Michelle Obama has an upcoming appearance on Life After Top Chef, which now seems particularly opportune.

Governor Romney's voter map, Cohen noted, aligned most closely to Google searches like "founding father quotes," "flag clipart," and "clean jokes."