2 days ago
The Crunch: how Ukraine drones hit Russia; marine heatwaves; and the collapse of Canada's third parties
Hello and welcome to another edition of The Crunch!
There's been so much great datavis published over the last couple of weeks, it was a real struggle to whittle down. But in this week's newsletter we've got another great political▲triangle▲ chart, an analysis of the accuracy of Asian casting in Hollywood, a visual explainer on the Ukraine drone attack on Russia, an interactive map showing the extent of marine heatwaves and how you can mislead people by being selective with the data you show.
The Greens lost three seats and their party leader in the 2025 Australian federal election, despite a relatively steady national vote. How did this happen? We took a deep dive into the Greens vote, looking at how dispersed Greens voters are across the country, why a seat redistribution affected Adam Bandt in Melbourne, and the 'three-cornered' contests between the Greens and the major parties in Brisbane.
Stick around to the end of the piece to play with our interactive preferences calculator.
Our colleagues in the US have also published this great visual guide to the Los Angeles protests. The map is particularly useful if, like us, you find it hard to tell the scale of the protests from the television coverage.
1. How accurately are Asian-Americans cast in Hollywood?
There's a lot to like in this visual essay from Dorothy Lu and Anna Li at the Pudding. It starts with a lovely comic strip explaining the inspiration for the piece, then takes a detailed look at Asian representation in cinema.
2. Ukraine drone attack
Even days after Ukraine's drone attack deep in Russian territory earlier in June, it was hard to imagine what exactly had happened.
Reuters has a great visual explainer, showing what the drones look like and how they were smuggled into Russia inside modified trucks.
3. Marine heatwaves getting more frequent and widespread
A quarter of the world's oceans experienced temperatures in 2024 that qualify as a heatwave.
Delger Erdenesanaa and climate graphics wizard Harry Stevens at the NYT have produced this interactive piece looking at how widespread marine heatwaves have become ($), with an excellent, if confronting, interactive map that shows the spread of heatwaves over time.
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The map also works really well on mobile, which you can't always say about a lot of interactive maps.
4. ▲△▲MORE TRIANGLES ▲△▲
Regular readers of the Crunch will know that we love ternary scatterplots, so we were excited to see this view of Canadian election results which shows the movement of vote share in every federal riding (these are Canadian electoral districts), from third parties to the two major parties.
The chart was made by designer Nick Abasolo, and you can read more about it here.
The New York Times on boys falling behind in kindergarten ($)
The Economist on girls falling behind in maths ($)
Our World in Data on how childhood leukemia became treatable
As The Economist's Archie Hall said, this chart posted by the UK Conservatives is the type where when you start the x axis really matters:
And so the FT's Alphaville made this excellent edit of the chart, showing how inflation was far higher – and increased far more – under the Conservatives:
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