It was a sound methodology. The head of Whole Foods at the time was a conservative capitalist, he knew exactly who anti-science beliefs sold to, and he only put stores where they matched up. In the 2008 election, 80 percent of counties with a Whole Foods had voted for Obama, while 80 of counties with a Cracker Barrel had voted for McCain.
If you are anti-GMO, you are far more likely to also be anti-vaccine, and the data showed it was clear how those people voted. The coast of California, which is pretty far left even for left-wing people, had more vaccine denial than the entire rest of the U.S. combined. And they also swore by organic food and supplements and the belief that solar power was viable, nuclear was unsafe, and fracking caused flaming tap water.
Not much has changed, as seen in this Minneapolis flyer for a meeting of legislators.
Robert F. Kennedy is going to tell politicians about how awful vaccines are, and the event is sponsored by Organic Consumers Association who, along with their puppet site U.S. Right To Know and an alarming number of writers associated with the New York University Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, steadily push anti-vaccine beliefs along with their bizarre food fetishes.
H/T Karen Ernst
Eventually we got a law passed in California forcing residents of Marin County and Humboldt and Berkeley and other anti-vaccine bastions to get their children protected, but Washington, which along with Oregon and California remain the bedrock of the anti-vaccine movement in the U.S., is currently in a state of emergency because so many children are infected there.
Minnesota prides itself on maverick libertarianism, so maybe they are embracing this stuff for the same reason they embrace raw milk and Jesse Ventura - to thumb their noses at the rest of the country - but they don't want their libertarianism about science to turn them into the Lyndon LaRouche of U.S. states.
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