InsightaaS: To date, most “Big Data” success stories have revolved around companies harnessing internal sources to make new kinds of decisions – but we are starting to see easier-to-use, easier-to-access publicly-available data sets appear, and with this data, new perspectives on a very wide range of issues. Inspired by a graph presented on Simon Garnier’s Graph zoo blog, we decided to compare two data sets: changes in traffic fatalities between 1994 and 2011, and the “red state, blue state” divide as illustrated by the Presidential election in 2012. The results show that states voting for the Democratic candidate have a better record of reducing fatalities than those opting for the Republican nominee: 16 of the top 21 states as measured by reductions in traffic fatalities voted Obama in 2012. However, it isn’t universally true that Democrats are more inclined towards a safer and more considerate lifestyle: a second chart (using data sourced through Toronto-based Quandl) shows that Red and Blue states have equivalent rates of violent crime.
