After months of flirting with the idea of running for office, turns out Chris Christie is set to give a press conference at 1pm today telling the world once and for all whether or not his two years cutting deals in Jersey prepared him to be leader of the free world.

Early reports say Christie will bow out of the presidential race, but that’s really a secondary matter. The real question on everyone’s mind: Is Chris Christie too fat to run for office?

Since he won the New Jersey gubernatorial primary in 2009, everyone’s been asking this very question. Liberals seem to like bringing it up, because they assume it’s a slot in the negative for Christie. Conservatives would rather point to liberals pointing it out, showing just how petty they are. And TV pundits, they just talk and talk and talk.

But know this. Chris Christie’s weight should have no bearing on whatever his announcement later today. He is not ‘too fat.’ In fact, his fatness is an asset. Science proves it.

According to a study conducted by a team of researchers at University of Missouri, rotund male politicians are viewed more favorably than skinny males. Five percent more, actually. Likewise, the study of 120 subjects found that skinny women are viewed 6 percent more favorably than their girthen counterparts. Overall, obese women were viewed 10 percent less favorably than obese males.

The New York Daily News actually wrote an article about this very phenomenon in January 2010. And the example they used: Chris Christie trouncing Jon Corzine in the 2009 New Jersey gubernatorial election.

Similarly, if you’re to believe University of Missouri political scientist Dr. Elizabeth Miller, co-author of the above-cited study, then know this: The phenomenon isn’t centralized to New Jersey, or the United States, even (sorry, liberals). An MIT study found not only that appearance has a huge effect on voters, but that people around the world all “have similar ideas about what a good politician looks like.”

In that study, researchers showed voters pairs of candidates from 122 elections in Mexico and Brazil. Respondents in the United States agreed with those from India 75 percent of the time, and with Mexican respondents 80 percent of the time.

Co-author of the study, Gabriel Lenz, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at MIT, even said after the study was conducted that “We were a little shocked that people in the United States and India so easily predicted the outcomes of elections in Mexico and Brazil based only on brief exposure to the candidates’ faces.”

Of course, all studies agree things like partisanship, ideology and issues matter more. Except, of course, if you’re one of millions of the United States’ uninformed voters! Another MIT study had 36,000 people rate politicians on a 1-100 scale in terms of attractiveness. And for every 10-point advantage a male candidate had over another, he experienced a 5-point advantage for those respondents who clocked at least 12 hours of television per week.

But perhaps we’re getting off subject here.

Just keep wasting time on cable news behind the headline, “Is Chris Christie is too fat to be president?”

UPDATE: As predicted, Christie said he’s not running, and it has nothing to do with his fat.

Hat tip: Cracked