The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

I&#x27;m strangely moved by this whole thing. It&#x27;s a pretty decent status check on where we are with democracy ATM. I&#x27;m not against democracy, but I do think we need to pay attention to what it can &amp; can&#x27;t do.<p>On one hand, this has been a model of democracy. A primary election agenda and referendum. The phrasing of the question was simple, clear and unbiased. The &quot;will of the people&quot; won over the will of the ruling structure. Most politicians and the main parties (especially before the opportunists jumped in) were against leaving. So was the financial sector and most big businesses.<p>OTOH, some of the problems inherent in democracy were also on display. A &quot;right to my opinion&quot; emotional public moved by very emotional arguments. Lies, untruths and misleading truths were the most prominent arguments on either side. A majority of the discussion was stupid.<p>We haven&#x27;t figured this shit out yet. Kings anyone? How about the best wrestler gets to be in charge? ideas?

As someone with no dog in this fight, I have to say that many of the pro-stay comments here are dismissive, arrogant, and the epitome of hand-waving &quot;we know best and everyone who disagrees with us is stupid or evil.&quot; It&#x27;s an ugly and insular attitude that is itself usually a sign of ignorance of the other side&#x27;s arguments and motivations. As a dev, I find it hard to believe that someone who can be so easily blinkered and so dismissive of others is going to be able to show flexibility and humility in their code and engineering decisions.<p>And maybe you&#x27;re just that good at compartmentalizing, but I wouldn&#x27;t want to risk bringing someone like that onto my team. How can you work with people who you think are stupid and ignorant when they disagree with you, even when you won&#x27;t explain your reasoning? And how will you ever be able to switch sides and admit you may have been wrong when you state your initial position in such absolutist terms?

Isn&#x27;t that expected? People who voted for the establishment status quo want to know what might happen in the years to come now that the vote has gone against them.<p>Voting to stay meant no change, therefore they knew more or less the outcome, but now that the outcome is opposite their votes, they want to look into the repercussions --this informs that it&#x27;s likely they stay vote didn&#x27;t investigate the alternative before voting and likely voted out of custom to stay.<p>But way to go WaPo and imply naïveté on the Brexiters.

Here&#x27;s a Leave fellow who says he just did it as a protest vote thinking it wouldn&#x27;t actually pass. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;AdamWSweeney&#x2F;status&#x2F;746269140915208193" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;AdamWSweeney&#x2F;status&#x2F;746269140915208193</a> I don&#x27;t know whether to laugh or cry. The most important international agreement in the UK&#x27;s history torn up because people thought this was a Buzzfeed poll.

One of the original suggested referendum questions was &quot;Do you think that the United Kingdom should be a member of the European Union?&quot;<p>It was rejected in favour of &quot;Should the United Kingdom remain a member of European Union&quot; because &quot;some participants in our research did not know that the United Kingdom is currently a member of the European Union.&quot;*<p>If that wasn&#x27;t evidence the referendum was a bad idea...<p>*<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.electoralcommission.org.uk&#x2F;__data&#x2F;assets&#x2F;pdf_file&#x2F;0006&#x2F;192075&#x2F;EU-referendum-question-assessment-report.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.electoralcommission.org.uk&#x2F;__data&#x2F;assets&#x2F;pdf_file...</a>

What I&#x27;re read so far about pro-leavers:<p>-They are stupid.<p>-They are xenophobic racists (over 50% of the population!).<p>-Trump welcomes the Brexit, so being pro-leave is stupid.<p>-Old people vote &quot;leave&quot; since they don&#x27;t have to face the consequences as long as the young people, and old people have no clue.<p>-&quot;Leave&quot; votes come mainly from E.U. subsidized areas, thus they bite the hand that feeds them.<p>-Pro-leave doesn&#x27;t even know what the E.U. is.<p>I have read a lot of insults regarding either position, but the attribution of stupidity comes almost always from the &quot;Remain&quot; camp. Which comes close to saying: there are no reasons to vote for leave, so they must be stupid. How stupid.

The BrExit vote was caused by the same problem that enables Trump (and Sanders) to win so many votes. The British Elites, like the Republic Elites are ignoring the pain caused to the working class through trade agreements and (in the case of BrExit) immigration from poorer parts of Europe. In different ways the EU integration put an additional burden on the already struggling British working class.<p>As a specific example, the immigrants, who came to the UK for jobs drove down wages for the working class with additional competition while at the same time putting a lot of pressure on budgets for the National Health System and social services.<p>The British Elites ignored the complaints of the working class while not even increasing the budgets for social services and the National Health Service proportionate to the additional demand caused by immigration.<p>It is this total lack of sensitivity of the British Elite to their fellow citizens that caused the BrExit.<p>Similarly, the &quot;rise of Trump&quot; is because Paul Ryan, the billionaire Wall Street hedge fund owners, and other Republic Elites have totally ignored the feeling of the working class. They have created trade policies which have &quot;exported&quot; American factory jobs while at the same time wanting to cut the social services that workers need precisely because of policies of elites (Republic and Democratic) to export their working class jobs.<p>For example, when Carrier air conditioners closed their Indiana factory and exported the jobs to Mexico, it was only Trump that complained repeatedly. Not Paul Ryan, Not billionaire Paul Singer, not Cruz, not Jeb Bush, not Rubio. The total cluelessness of the Republic Elite is why Trump won the nomination.<p>The rise of Sanders is because the Democratic elite refused to listen to among others, the young, for whom the cost of education has increased significantly and who are unable to buy homes, etc, because of rising student debt.<p>In the cases of the British Elites, the Republic and Democratic Elites, they all appear to care more for &quot;The City&quot; and Wall Street Bankers than they do working class citizens and the young who are attempting to start their lives as their parents had.

This sort of distain-for-plebes arrogance on the part of the elites is why they will continue to be surprised by events for the foreseeable future.

&quot;Hey, you voted against what we recommended to you, so now we will be telling you for the next 5 years that you are the stupid one that you don&#x27;t even know what you voted against!&quot;<p>I don&#x27;t get it - this is a prime example of democracy in action so why so much outrage? Do you rather want to live in technocracy&#x2F;totality and allow voting &quot;properly profiled&quot; people only? &quot;USSR is a great idea&quot; anyone?<p>Get over it, as much as shocking it can be to you. You can&#x27;t always profit from every democratic decision, even if you feel it&#x27;s the only correct one. Just accept other people desire something else and pick up your next fight properly so that you won&#x27;t be as shocked as now and completely unprepared. And next time vote politicians into office that actually have brain and don&#x27;t risk everything for their own personal agenda. It&#x27;s just grotesque.

Sanity check: Google searchers aren&#x27;t necessarily voters. The UK had a massive (72.2%) turnout, which still leaves 13 million potential voters at home [1]. I think it&#x27;s reasonable that those least-likely to vote on this issue also might be a large contingent of those who don&#x27;t even know what the EU is. Moreover, Google searchers aren&#x27;t necessarily in the electorate. They might be kids, etc.<p>1. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.telegraph.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;2016&#x2F;06&#x2F;23&#x2F;high-turnout-for-eu-referendum-vote-could-break-uk-records&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.telegraph.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;2016&#x2F;06&#x2F;23&#x2F;high-turnout-for-...</a>

&quot;People of $MY_IDENTITY believe a thing, so I&#x27;ll vote for it no matter what $OTHERS say!&quot;<p>I thought before reading that story that the above was a bad caricature, but holy shit. How can you not know what the EU is if you&#x27;re in a member country and can read? It&#x27;s like an American not knowing what Congress is!

&quot;Even though I voted to leave, this morning I woke up and I just — the reality did actually hit me,&quot; one woman told the news channel ITV News. &quot;If I&#x27;d had the opportunity to vote again, it would be to stay.&quot;

&quot;The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.&quot;<p>- Winston Churchill

This is the problem with popular votes on issues with far-reaching and complex consequences. There are certain matters that are better left to elected politicians. If one were to have a popular vote as to whether or not we should dissolve the IRS in the US, that measure would likely pass because &quot;yay no taxes!&quot; but would result in the collapse of the US government.<p>I&#x27;m not sure that individual voters that have no conception of the myriad issues associated with this decision should have been allowed to vote on it.

The subtext of the article seems to be that British voters don&#x27;t know what the EU is despite voting to leave it.<p>But their evidence doesn&#x27;t show that. Yes, there is a spike in people googling &quot;what is BREXIT&quot; and such things. But how many voters are doing that search? What percent of voters are uninformed? No one knows, so why write an article about it?<p>This is low quality journalism.

Pundits need to stop it with this &quot;mock the unsophisticated yokels&quot; click-baiting and trolling. <i>Of course</i> people are Googling about the EU after a major upset referendum about the EU.<p>One reason &quot;insane&quot; anti-establishment positions like this are winning (even when they are insane) is because pundits stubbornly refuse to actually listen to peoples&#x27; reasons for supporting them. Instead they mock them as backwater idiots and insult their intelligence.<p>I don&#x27;t know UK politics well enough to say for certain, but I know in the USA Trump is largely a FU vote against an establishment that&#x27;s allowing vast swaths of the country to collapse into permanent depression while ignoring the problem and horribly distorting the economy to keep Wall St. pumped up at the expense of things like housing affordability. I can&#x27;t stand him myself but I know where the support is coming from, and if nobody listens to these issues we&#x27;re going to have President Trump in November.

My first impression of the result was shouldn&#x27;t there be a requirement for a larger difference than 1 - 2% for something like this to pass? A majority of at least 65% for example? I don&#x27;t know what I&#x27;m talking about really but that seems logical, what do you all think?

In my jumbled mess of thoughts this is a rough list of priorities that should be addressed at before democracy can work in a &quot;more perfect way&quot; and can&#x27;t be misused by the power-hungry elites or the disgruntled masses led by dangerous clowns:<p>1) Wealth Inequality brought on by unfair access to opportunity (This one item needs its own list of priorities in order to be figured out... Basic income? Better social support in the form of jobs, education, health? Fair legal treatment?.. too long to list here)<p>2) An uninformed populace (Removal of &quot;personalities&quot; from politics. Maybe even a shift from voting for people but rather for issues. Engage people in political life often, not just when elections roll around. A more responsible media landscape - Less Kardashians and much less opinion or propaganda journalism.)<p>3) Get money out of politics or at least enforce mandatory transparency of financial influence in politics<p>4) Ability to delegate your voting power to someone you trust (it could be a group or an individual). If you&#x27;re on social assistance and your priority is to survive, you might not have time to be informed about every single issue. You could however empower an individual, association, union or another entity that you feel represents your interests to vote on your behalf).

So when googling something is an indication of what people <i>actually know</i>??<p>This only tells you what people were <i>looking for</i> not what articles they read or what conclusions they drew from the actual articles they read. We have truly jumped the ship if people are drawing conclusions based solely on what people are searching for in Google.<p>Here&#x27;s your sign. . .

Or, you know, this could be an uptick from the percentage of people who did not bother to turn out to vote. Spin the narrative however you like.

I&#x27;d actually modify most referenda and other public elections to include a brief quiz about the choice taken.<p>For example,<p>I VOTE:<p>[_] LEAVE [_] REMAIN:<p>My choice above means (choose one): (_) more welfare; (_) less welfare. Foreign trade will be (choose one): (_) simplified; (_) complicated. etc.<p>If the quiz choices don&#x27;t match the vote itself, the vote is INVALID.<p>Thus the amount of uninformed votes would be reduced to zero.<p>Of course the options would have to be agreed upon by both sides.<p>&quot;Oh, but someone could easily be taught to &#x27;cheat&#x27;, you could tell someone what answers to pick!&quot; Well, sure. Good luck convincing an immigrant to tick the &quot;(_) less jobs for immigrants&quot; box.

&gt; Awakening to a stock market plunge and a precipitous decline in the value of the pound that Britain hasn&#x27;t seen in more than 30 years<p>There&#x27;s a tad bit of sensationalism here. Yes, this is a HUGE drop to happen in one day, but the British Pound is only ~1.5% lower than the low of 3 months ago (when compared against the US dollar).<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tradingview.com&#x2F;chart&#x2F;34OYpFIv&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tradingview.com&#x2F;chart&#x2F;34OYpFIv&#x2F;</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;6IyjxnX" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;6IyjxnX</a>

Why can&#x27;t these people just accept a democratic decision without painting those who voted in an undesired way as retards?<p>Every major voting decision in the last 10 years was painted (in basically all media) as the smart and educated ones vs the retards, bigots, racists or even nazis.<p>With this attitude we are one step away from abolishing democracy altogether. Obviously because we must protect the stupid ones from their own opinions.<p>I originally came from a Communist country and I&#x27;ve got to say that over the years all mayor western publications have turned into something resembling the Soviet Pravda.

I&#x27;m confident in the future this will be a case study on the failings of democracy. I absolutely do not believe all 52% of leave voters realized the economic repercussions.

We need some form of modern Sortition;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sortition" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sortition</a>

Haven&#x27;t read all the comments here, but isn&#x27;t it possible or even likely that it&#x27;s Remain voters having an &quot;oh shit what next&quot; moment that are Googling the EU and the implications of leaving, as opposed to ignorant abstainers and Leave voters checking up on the consequences of their vote after the fact?<p>The article doesn&#x27;t actually take a position, but the tenor of the viral social media chatter seems to assume the latter case.

Going out on a tangent - Would California be more successful leaving the US as an independent country?<p>As things stand, California is currently the eighth largest economy in the world on their own. 17 of the top 30 U.S. tech companies are in California, which should come as no surprise. Tourism, entertainment, biotech, and agriculture are multibillion dollar industries already. Aerospace and defense contracts still rake in around $25bn a year. And many state business leaders are increasingly showing a real commitment to renewable energy.<p>Overall, while I believe there is definitely more potential for a social democratic style of government if California were its own country, the changes would not be that drastic. Barring a major collapse, California would, like Canada, still remain in the U.S.&#x27;s economic and cultural shadow. And who knows? Secession might be the best thing to happen to other states like Texas, New York, and Massachusetts. Who else would be capable of filling the void left in the energy, media, and technology industries? There is certainly upside in such a move but also a great deal of risk.

I have no real reason why I think it would work well, but I have always felt that voting on anything should only be allowed to the people that can show a half decent knowledge of that topic and not for people that just go with the first thing they hear. You might as well flip a coin at that point. If you want to vote, do your part as a citizen and learn about what it is you are voting on, how it will impact you and your country as a whole and if you don&#x27;t want to do that, don&#x27;t vote.<p>Democratic countries gave power to the people, but we basically give it right back because &quot;its too hard&quot;, or &quot;i dont have time&quot;, etc. so we only vote from our gut feeling and follow the loudest voice. Gut feeling is fine in a fight or flight sense, but not for policies that impact the whole country.<p>IMO I would think decisions like this and many others would benefit from something similar to the scientific method. Construct your proposal, share it with everyone, let them critique it, revise, share, etc. and then vote. Biggest thing is taking ego out of the equation.

You decide to go on a trip, next you get out a map. This makes perfect sense, and in no way reflects poorly on the British people.

Some voter demographic info - <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;uk-politics-36616028" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;uk-politics-36616028</a><p>- Rural areas mostly voted to leave<p>- Younger voters voted to stay, but turnout by younger voters was lower<p>- Of 30 areas with the fewest graduates (I assume this means college? wasn&#x27;t clear) 28 voted to leave

From the video:<p>&gt; No country has ever left the European Union before and hasn&#x27;t used article 50.<p>I&#x27;m not sure about article 50, but Greenland left the EEC (EU predecessor) in 1985.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Withdrawal_from_the_European_Union#Greenland" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Withdrawal_from_the_European_U...</a>

The WaPo was always bad, but it&#x27;s descending into linkbait shit, and every headline is a backhanded editorial. Leave won by 4 points with a 70% turnout. <i>Plenty of the people doing the googling voted stay.</i> I assume the stay voters knew less about the EU than the leave voters not because of the position they chose, but simply because it was the status quo, supported by the entire establishment, default.<p>What&#x27;s happening is that people who are facing what has been painted to be a major change in their circumstances are checking the internet for as much information as possible so they can figure out how to deal with it.<p>Translated into WaPo: the idiots who voted against the EU didn&#x27;t even know what it was.

The title is written such that they would have you believe it&#x27;s the people who voted to leave the E.U. who are doing the Googling.<p>How does WP know it&#x27;s not the other way around? It could be it&#x27;s all the people who voted to stay...

Odd, how in some close elections if the result is aligned what the media and the establishment want, &quot;the people have spoken&quot; and grandiose words are spoken about the power of democracy.<p>And yet when the election is close but the result runs counter to what those in power want....suddenly we have hand-wringing over misleading campaigns, &quot;uninformed voters&quot;, the perils of democracy, etc. etc.<p>Like clockwork.

So, can they rejoin? Or will the entire country collapse due to the awkwardness of reversing the earlier decision?

A little late to ask that question... is democracy ok when people don&#x27;t know what they are voting for?

&quot;some British voters are now saying&quot; ...<p>So says The Washington Post. What doesn&#x27;t seem to get through to the global elite is that regardless of the decision, the people demand constitutional and auditable mechanisms to &#x27;voice&#x27; their opinion.

There are 25% who didn&#x27;t vote, maybe because they didn&#x27;t expect the Vote to Leave to win and just now they got worried.<p>Instead of this trouble, they could probably go through with fixing the EU legislatures that they find problematic.

Maybe things would make more sense to if EU countries went to the olympics under a single flag? It&#x27;s not like American athletes compete under the flag of their state.

I&#x27;ve only seen percentages, not figures. I&#x27;m not sure you can even say that these searches are being issued by people who turned out to vote.

The establishment viewpoint seems to be that snide recrimination coupled to rampant emotional predictions of doom is news. I don&#x27;t get it.

Quite possibly not the sames ones who voted?

history will tell if they did the right choice. right now no body really knows.

I&#x27;m googling &quot;what the F&#x27; is the BREXIT about anyway&quot;.

&quot;What the hell did we just do guys?&quot;

Wow talk about someone not prepared to look at data but instead sneer and insult . Quelle surprise (that&#x27;s French by the way)

If this is for real... It is really sad. I understood that xenophobia was the main reason Great Britain wanted to get out of EU, which is also sad.

People who voted remain want to see what it&#x27;s all about now.

They should now have a vote to rename England &quot;Brity McBritface&quot;.

Patronizing attitude towards British voters from newspapers and the elites. Democracy happened, British people wanted to regain sovereignty over their affairs, and they did it. Good for them.

The left wing establishment once again shows their utter contempt for the common people. Of course there&#x27;s a lot of people searching about the EU today. It&#x27;s pretty disingenuous to suggest it&#x27;s a sign that they&#x27;re ignorant. But hey, anything to defend the narrative, right?

As usual, WaPo is shitposting. Why are they not banned here?<p>Yes, people are deeply curious about the full effect of this huge proposed change, especially the half of the entire population who voted for Stay because they weren&#x27;t too worried about the UK&#x2F;EU boundary when they were happy enough with the status quo total package.