YouGov Profiles data reveals how Chris Evans may be the perfect new hire for Top Gear
Almost three months after former Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson was fired for punching a producer in the face, the programme finally has a new replacement. Chris Evans, the current BBC Radio Two Breakfast Show and the One Show host, perhaps most famously remembered for presenting TFI Friday in the 1990s, has signed a three year contract for the BBC Two show.
Data from YouGov Profiles – our connected data vault of over 120,000 data points, collected from over 200,000 UK YouGov members – reveals Chris Evans is a perfect hire for Top Gear.
Fans of Top Gear (people who have given the show a positive rating in the Take Part section of our website) are three times more likely than the general public to like Chris Evans, and same is true vice versa.
With YouGov profiles we use a statistical measure called a Z Score to calculate the strength of correlation between two data points, taking anything above 4 as a very strong correlation. Chris Evans' correlation with Top Gear is 22.6, which is extraordinarily high – Top Gear's correlation with Chris Evans is even higher, at 28.
Among those who have actually watched Top Gear in the past 12 months, Chris Evans is the fourth highest correlated TV personality, only behind Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond (which for these purposes barely count) and Kevin McCloud.