Our ideas graveyard

Also: The best of our data journalism

Marie Segger
Data journalist and interim special-projects editor

Donald Trump’s approval score recently dropped to -20—his lowest yet, and also the worst score for any president we’ve tracked at this point in their term. Mr Trump’s low matches Joe Biden’s nadir after his disastrous debate performance in 2024, when many Americans concluded he was unfit for office. Conflicts can boost approval ratings, but the Iran war has not caused a rally-round-the-flag effect. Its knock-on impacts, such as rising petrol prices, are worrying voters and have trigged Mr Trump’s approval to slide from what was already a low base. If the war continues, it might still have further to fall. Mr Trump likes to set records, but I’m sure he wouldn’t be chuffed with this one. Follow our interactive tracker for the latest data and breakdowns by party, state and demographics. Paying subscribers can read more about Mr Trump’s approval rating at the bottom of this newsletter.

More of our data and visual reporting this week:

• Many countries have announced measures to make petrol more affordable. Should Britain’s government follow suit? As a share of median income fuel bills are lower than they have been for years and far short of the dizzying £4,279 reached in 2023, when the government stepped in to limit bills. James Fransham explained why it should hold off for now.

• In America autism diagnoses have quadrupled over the past 20 years. The trend has been driven by more mild diagnoses; moderate to severe cases remained mostly flat. Expenditure on treatments has rocketed in some states—yet care is struggling to keep up, wrote Daniella Raz. We’ll send this as a newsletter to paying subscribers on Friday.

• Estimating the damage caused by the war in Iran through open sources has become trickier after some satellite-image providers restricted what they share with the press. Anton LaGuardia reported that although the picture remains incomplete, it is clear that Iran has damaged a surprising amount of American kit.

• Not all our pitches make it to publication. Below our data team shares some of the ideas and data explorations that for one reason or another never got to see the light of day. You can judge whether some of them are worthy of resurrection.

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Our ideas graveyard

I’m from Scotland, and almost every time I go to visit family there I return with an idea for a far-too-niche data story. On my first day back in the office I’ve found myself downloading data on everything from bakeries to dolphins. These ideas rarely go anywhere. One slightly more promising lead came after a trip to the Hebrides in 2024, when I noticed that holidays in Scotland had become eye-wateringly expensive. I found some great data on average room rates across Britain and started enthusiastically making charts—only to spot an article covering similar ground already on our contents for the next issue. Great minds think alike, I suppose!

Ainslie Johnstone
Data journalist

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I have often thought that Billy Joel’s 1989 hit “We Didn’t Start the Fire” would make a great data visualisation. The lyrics list significant people and events from the 1950s to the 1980s, interspersed with nauseatingly repetitive choruses. Crowbarring 40 years of politics and culture into tight rhyming couplets is no mean feat, but at some points it seems that Mr Joel is being a bit loose with the chronology. I used a large-language model to pull out all the references in the song along with the year they happened and the timestamp within the song. The resulting chart shows that, except for a few outliers, he mostly sticks to the timeline. By the time he got to 1963 (“JFK, blown away”) the song was dragging on a bit, so he rifles through the next 25 years in a fraction of the time. It’s hard to imagine a use for this chart or an article to accompany it, unless The Economist dramatically increases its coverage of Billy Joel’s career. But it was fun to make.

Matt McLean
Lead data visualisation designer

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In the first months of 2020, I came across new data listing “stress scores” for every London Underground station. We have written about bad behaviour and noise levels on the tube, so the train geek in me was eager to map the numbers and see how they compared. Unfortunately, covid-19 was starting to spread rapidly—and not long after Britain was sent into lockdown, resulting in very few people using the tube, so I never pitched the piece. I’m not convinced it would have made the cut even without a pandemic stealing the spotlight.

Helen Atkinson
Visual data journalist

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China’s population is ageing. I wondered to what extent it could offset the economic effects by moving its workforce from the country’s unprofitable hinterland to productive cities. How fast would China have to urbanise to completely cancel out ageing? My search for the answer led me to produce pages of calculus, which of course never saw the light of day. In the end our data editor told me that the article should be grounded in data and reporting, rather than my hypothetical calculations. Recently Simon Cox, another colleague, wrote about how China’s urbanisation seems to have already peaked.

China data journalist

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Donald Trump’s approval rating has sunk to Joe Biden’s lowest point

He is mirroring his predecessor’s post-debate slump of 2024

Beyond his loyal, red-capped base, Donald Trump has never been especially popular. Our tracker of polling data from YouGov shows that, across both his terms in office, he has spent only eight weeks with more Americans approving of his performance than disapproving. Even so, the latest numbers should worry both Mr Trump and Republicans heading into November’s midterm elections.