Datawatch: EU trade with the UK
For most EU countries, the UK is more important as an export market than as a source of imports. In only three member states- Ireland, Cyprus and Malta- does trade with the UK form a higher share of imports than exports.
Datawatch: UK GDP forecast for 2017
UK GDP growth predictions for 2017 had averaged 2.2 per cent among economic forecasters, but dropped to just 0.4 per cent after the EU referendum, with some forecasting zero growth or contraction for next year.
Brexit: everything you wanted to know about turnout by age at the EU referendum
A week on from Britain’s historic vote to leave the EU, some of the most frequently asked questions have concerned turnout levels across different age groups.
Early cries that the young had been betrayed by older voters were countered with claims that it’s young people’s own fault for not voting in sufficient numbers. Some have asked how the UK’s age-structure itself impacted the vote: is the population so top-heavy in age-terms that the odds were always stacked against the younger generation? And then there is the question of whether David Cameron missed a trick in not giving the vote to 16- and 17-year-olds, who would have been expected to lean heavily towards Remain.
We have dug into the best available figures on turnout by age from the EU referendum, and combined them with various public datasets which allows us to answer these questions with the benefit of historical context, or even a glimpse into the future. Here’s what we found. Read more
The economic factors behind the vote for Brexit
Professor Kenneth Rogoff says that the UK vote to leave the EU was a “Russian roulette for republics”, with an ‘absurdly low bar for exit, requiring only a simple majority’, with no supermajority, second referendum or parliamentary confirmation vote required.
Many voters did not have had a clear idea of what they were voting for or of its consequences, and many now seem to regret it. But the results did confirm the existence of a diffuse anger among the UK population. Read more
Datawatch: US interest rates
The wider Brexit impact can be seen in US interest rate futures. Signs of slowing momentum in the US economy had pushed expected rises in the Fed’s policy rate further out but, after the vote, non increases were expected until after 2017.
Datawatch: share of world GDP
China, the US and the EU- excluding the UK are the three biggest economies in the world and together they account for about half of the global output in 2016. The UK ranks ninth by size of the economy, with a 2 per cent share.
Brexit: voter turnout by age
The chain of events that led to Brexit will be examined in great detail — and much anguish on the Remain side — for years to come. Rapid changes in the UK’s political climate undoubtedly played a part, and global events including the Great Recession and recent European migrant crisis have left their mark.
But for now we can focus on what we know in the immediate aftermath of the vote: the distinguishing characteristics of the areas of Britain that voted for either side. Read more
Datawatch: EU import duties
The average bound duty in the EU varies across products, ranging from 45 per cent for dairy products, 20 per cent for beverages & tobacco to zero on cotton. The average level applied tends to be lower when taking into account EU preferential trade deals.
The companies using new methods to poll the EU referendum
Polling has dominated coverage of the UK’s EU referendum for the last month, with the focus shifting between the polls’ reliability following their 2015 misfire, the methodological challenges pollsters face, and the Remain vs Leave race itself. Read more
What are we to make of the polls?
Political journalists have become exceedingly wary of pollsters since they called last year’s general election wrongly. Are they right to be? The performance of major polling companies in this referendum could make or break their reputations – get it wrong again and the fury of Fleet Street will be unconstrained.
But there’s good reason to feel that hacks should have learned some lessons too – the first being, properly understand what it is that you are reporting. Here are a handful of key points to bear in mind when in the coming days we consider the pollsters’ performance in this referendum. Read more
Datawatch: economic growth in the UK vs. non-EU countries
The average annual GDP growth in the UK was about 2 per cent in the five years to the first quarter of 2016, higher than that of Norway and Switzerland, which are not in the European Union. The same is true over the past 15 and 20 years.
How growth, trade, migration and more would be affected by a split with the EU Read more
Datawatch: UK employment rate hits new record high
The proportion of people aged 16 to 64 years old who are in work surpassed 74 per cent in the first quarter this year, the highest level since comparable records began in 1971. This is in contrast with the experience of the majority of OECD countries – including the US – where employment rates are still below the pre-crisis levels. Read more
Datawatch: use of force to defeat terrorism
Europeans are divided on the use of force to defeat terrorism. Nearly two-third of Dutch, Germans and Greeks say military force creates hatred that leads to more terror, but most Italians and Poles say force is the best way to defeat it.
An update to the FT’s EU referendum poll-of-polls
The way our model calculates the average from the remaining five polls in its basket after outliers are removed is completely unchanged, but the polls in that basket should be more representative of where the ‘true’ opinion of the electorate lies.
After this change, our poll-of-polls has Leave on 45, two points ahead of Remain. Read more
Euro 2016 predictions: who will win in France based on the key stats?
The European Football Championships are upon us, and with them an eclectic mix of prediction models from media organisations, financial institutions and independent statisticians. To assuage our FOMO (fear of missing out, for the non-Millennials), the FT has joined in with one of our own.
Spain are favourites to lift the trophy, narrowly ahead of Germany and hosts France, based on our method which uses Champions League appearances and players’ market values to determine each team’s strength. This trio of teams comes in well ahead of the other 21 countries taking part.
Read on for details of the model and how it compares to the betting markets. Read more
Datawatch: Services trade balance
The US and the UK have huge trade deficits in goods particularly with China, but they run the biggest surpluses in services. Financial services are particularly strong in the UK, while tourism is prominent in Spain and IT in India.
Filings by country and sector and the list of the world’s top patenting companies Read more
EU referendum polls: can we trust them, and are there alternative prediction models?
Two weeks out from from Britain’s historic EU referendum, opinion polls are dominating the debate. The question is: are they adding or removing clarity about the eventual outcome?
Today we published an overview of some of the challenges facing pollsters as they look to demonstrate that the 2015 general election mis-fire was a one-off. What follows here is a look at how some of these issues are affecting our own poll-of-polls — and how we might deal with them — as well as an exploration of some of the alternatives to pure polling when it comes to forecasting the result on June 23. Read more
| About this blog | Feedback | Commenting |
Keith Fray heads the editorial statistics team, providing data for articles and graphics. His background is in economics, studying at Birkbeck College, London.
Valentina Romei is a statistical researcher at the FT. She joined the FT in 2008 after working both as an academic and market researcher.
John Burn-Murdoch is a data journalist on the FT's interactive team, and writes the sport analytics column The Baseline. He joined the FT in 2013 and teaches data journalism at City University London.
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