Google Searches Show Brits Have No Clue What They Just Voted On
With all the economic issues, immigration concerns, and just general instability associated with the United Kingdom's vote to break from the European Union, the news of the "leave" campaign's victory struck hard Friday morning. But even more frightening than John Oliver's assessment: apparently, most Brits don't even know what they just voted for.
According to Google Trends post-referendum data, UK citizens were asking frighteningly uninformed questions about Brexit well after the polls closed. For example, the search engine reported a +250% jump in "what happens if we leave the EU?" Nobody thought to Google this stuff beforehand?
Take a look at the spike for yourself:
Yeah, that's a little late to start your research on the issue. And Google's top questions on the EU since the Brexit vote are also troubling, with questions like "What is the EU?" coming up as Britain's second-most Googled question on the issue. You know, it's that thing you just voted to leave.
And just to keep you face-palming, here are some other Brexit-related trends taking over Google.
The rest of the world’s confused, too
Money is on everyone’s mind
#EUref: highest ever search interest in the British #pound pic.twitter.com/nMj4Mns2ak
— GoogleTrends (@GoogleTrends) June 24, 2016