Democrats More Likely To Drink And Eat Their Feelings From Election Stress

It's 9 p.m. on a Friday night, and you're in your usual position: hunched over your Cheeto-dust covered laptop, refreshing FiveThirtyEight's midterm election predictions for the second time in three minutes. Lite? Classic? Deluxe? Lite? Classic? Deluxe? LIGHT CLASSIC DELUXE LIGHTCLASSICDELUXELIGHTCLASSICJDK@$#(*KCK)*8H&94BLL>>

No, surely we're not alone—and a new survey backs us up. A national poll conducted by YouGov on behalf of fitness tech company Daily Burn finds that the stress of upcoming elections has Americans eating and drinking more—particularly if they're Democrats. The survey of nearly 2,500 Americans concluded "Democrats are 50 percent more likely than Republicans to say they're eating their feelings as a result of the current political climate," and that such anxieties have led Democrats to drink alcohol "at a 2-to-1 ratio over their counterparts in the GOP." People of both parties also report increasing their social media and TV binge-watching in the lead-up to the midterm elections. I just finished Netflix's The Haunting Of Hill House while stuffing my face with Halloween-leftover Reese's, so all of this anecdotally checks out. There is a small bright spot, though: Democrats are offsetting some of that face-stuffing with exercise, as they're 40 percent more likely than GOP counterparts to say they've worked out more frequently in the lead-up to the election.

One also wonders if the stress of being told we're eating more as a result of stress will also inspire Americans to eat more. It's a vicious cycle, truly, as some Americans obsess over The New York Times' color-coded election predictions or masochistically devise an hour-by-hour plan for watching the results—thankfully, it should all be over by tomorrow night, at which point we can commence stress-eating about some other issue.