Hello and welcome to another edition of The Crunch!
In this week’s newsletter we have charts on the political polarisation of Silicon Valley, how discounting in supermarkets preferences some goods over others, which age groups in the UK are most likely to have an accident while driving and the latest breakdown of where current climate policy is going to take us.
But first … Labor v the Coalition: who is leading in the polls?
We have launched our new poll-tracking page. With an election expected some time in the first half of 2025 we’re going to be tracking the polls in aggregate to get a picture of how things are going.
The main finding from the model at the moment is there has been a big decline in the estimated two-party preferred support for Labor since the last election, and a corresponding increase in support for the Coalition. Looking at the change in primary votes however shows that this is not all due to increasing intended primary vote share for the Coalition. Minor parties and independents have increased their estimated primary vote by 2.5 percentage points since the 2022 election.
You can see many more charts here, including demographic and state breakdowns.
Four charts from the fortnight
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1. Pricing patterns at supermarkets
With the increased scrutiny on supermarkets due to the cost of living crisis in Australia, people are starting to notice some of their stranger pricing practices. This excellent piece from the ABC shows how certain products oscillate between either being half-price or full price and often this pricing regime can alternate between the two major supermarket chains. For instance, while chocolates are on special at Coles, they’re full price at Woolworths.
The other interesting aspect to supermarket pricing is that certain categories of products are more likely to be discounted, as anyone who has tried to buy washing powder at a supermarket knows.
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2. There is a large gap between climate action and pledges
The 15th edition of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) emissions gap report shows there is a “massive gap between rhetoric and reality” on climate pledges, according to Carbon Brief.
This chart from Carbon Brief, adapted from a graph in the report, shows the gap between the world’s emissions under current policy, and if conditional and unconditional commitments to reduce greenhouse gases are met (nationally determined contributions; or NDCs) are met:
Importantly it also shows the projected degrees of warming associated with each trajectory, and how far off we are from reducing warming to below 2C and 1.5C respectively.
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3. Who are Britain’s most dangerous drivers?
Tom Calver, data editor at The Times in the UK, has an interesting column about whether younger or older drivers are more dangerous.
The statistics show that the risk of an accident is higher among young men, but even higher for the oldest age groups of both sexes. This is measured as the rate of serious car driver casualties per billion miles travelled, so factors in different driving frequencies.
However, despite the oldest age groups having the highest risk of accidents, there’s another key statistic to look at. As Tom puts it: “there aren’t many old drivers, and those that do drive don’t drive very much.” And so, he says, drivers aged 17-24 are responsible for far more accidents than drivers aged over 85.
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4. Corporate US is becoming more left-leaning and polarised
It’s another joy plot. Two in one newsletter? Is it Christmas? John Burn-Murdoch, writing in the FT, highlights an interesting new study on the political leanings of executives and directors at US companies.
The study analyses donation records to suggest that corporate America has shifted left over time. But it was this chart from John which caught my eye:
The other trend apparent from the data is that polarisation is also increasing, with companies with “overwhelmingly left-leaning or right-leaning leadership teams” rising. You can read more here.
Spotlight on … various other things we have seen
Apparently there’s an election going on. The Economist is using the same model we’re using for Australian polling to track polls in the US. It is worth a look ahead of vote counting beginning
An addendum to the NPR chart we shared last edition: the real reason billion-dollar disasters like Hurricane Helene are growing more common
An Off the Charts candidate – how long was the ‘stone age’?
A nice map of global tide ranges using the Spilhaus projection (via FlowingData)
Off the Charts
This visual essay from The Pudding uses mazes as an incredibly creative and effective means of representing complexity, in this case the difficulty of obtaining an abortion in each US state:
Actually completing a maze was a bit tricky for me on mobile, but the visual metaphor is extremely effective, I think.
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