Just as much as some remain votes were blind votes for the status quo, some leave votes were blind votes for change.
Please don't use Google Trends for political gain. It's ridiculous on either side.
The question being asked is, literally, which side is less likely to even know what the EU is.
Normally I'd agree with you.
It's pretty safe to bet that a lot of those searches were from people who voted.
It's a truth that a lot of people are googling things like this inside the UK and the adverb "frantically" I believe reasonably addresses how large the amount of searches is.
I also believe that the implication stands solid, that a lot of the Brexit voters had no idea what they voted on, what the implications of a Brexit are, and were largely motivated by things like fear of immigrants, which intellectuals seem to agree is a... not so smart fear to have.
First, we have to treat the source with healthy skepticism: Google, like most other large companies, probably wanted the UK to Remain, so they're going to release data that is intended to embarrass the Leave camp since they're bitter over their loss and want to prove that the vote was bad. An article stating that Google claims this is one of the most-asked questions is fine, but it's taken as de-facto true by the WaPo, which is improper. People tend to believe these things, but even results in peer-reviewed studies are totally and completely fabricated with surprising frequency. It certainly happens a lot with unauditable data like Google Trends.
Besides being incentivized to embarrass the British people, we also have to assume that Google is squashing various forms of the query into one block: "What is the EU?", "what is eu", "what is the e.u.?", and so on would be logical, but what about just "EU"? Is it counted? Surely many people would type that in to be directed to the official EU home page.
Second, even if it is an accurate representation of the search queries in the UK, there is not necessarily heavy correlation between people that voted and people that were asking that question. Many people who cannot or do not vote use Google, especially teenagers that are tech-literate but not yet of age to vote, and they may be seeking to be informed on the monumental decision that others in the UK just made.
Third, asking Google a question doesn't necessarily mean you don't know the answer. I often conduct queries for things I already know because I want to find a citation for a specific claim, I want to find a related image, or I want to see what other people think and/or say about the thing. This is pretty typical. For example, my last search was "howard dean yell" to find a link to the clip of Howard Dean's infamous "yeah". I've known about Howard Dean's yell since it happened in 2004. That I searched for this doesn't mean that I was ignorant previously; it just means I was trying to find something concrete.
Fourth, the way that Google presents suggested questions can cause people to click the option out of convenience, curiosity, or even just proximity, so we need not assume that every query is sincere or even intentional.
So, an unbiased first paragraph of the article would be something like this:
American web search company Google has stated that the query "What is the EU?" was among the most searched today, hours after the UK voted to leave the European Union.
Compare to the actual first paragraph, which literally says "it seems many Britons may not even know what they had actually voted for." That's open hostility and bias.
Aside from all this, there is bias merely in the selection of what to publish, even if the article and headline are written in a seemingly-neutral way. The fact that WaPo is choosing to publicize Google's unverifiable declaration in the first place lets you know where they stand.
The D.C. political class : politics :: MBAs : business. And WaPo is the Harvard Business Review. In that it's often useful, but suffers from the belief that the hoi polloi would be lost without the "professional political class" to tell them what they want, and derisively dismisses ideas that don't originate within certain orthodox circles.
I would assume they can break down this type of data by country very easily.
I can't link directly to districts on this page but have a look at /Westmidlands/Wallsall and /westmidlands/wolverhampton.
I don't know but I suspect a fair number in those towns will have joined in with friends/family as part of the general mood.
Petrol price rises coming through soon unless you guys all start buying sterling again. Some companies have hedged their supplies but others buy only a few days forward. Priced in $ of course.
Outright ignorance is definitely pushing it. It's a guess, but very much an educated guess that it's mostly Brexiters who are googling it. Bremainers tend to be better informed, so they are less likely to be doing last minute (or in this case post-last minute) googling about the issue.
What a load of bollocks. The majority of people on both sides have been getting the bulk of their information from mainstream media, which is heavily biased towards a limited set of narratives. There's a fair amount of compelling information that has been omitted from or suppressed in the public debates.
In any case, we can't say for sure which side of the argument was searching for 'What is the EU?', though odds are it was a mixture of people from remain, leave, undecided and ineligible.
No evidence for many cases, but some.
Would you really be surprised if many voters didn't know what they were voting for? Especially if the outcome is one agreed upon by most intellectuals to be the worse outcome.
If you voted for brexit and you still think it was a good thing - then you have a serious issue with parsing the reality in front of you and understanding it. Honestly. The empirical fact is here, today, the reality is gruesome.
If you still think that this is all great, then you must just enjoy chaos and uncertainty, which makes you a queer duck indeed.
No, brexiteers were duped, even Farage said so himself this morning - and moving from an entrenched emotional position isn't easy, which is where the reality parsing defect comes from.
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's likely they stay vote didn't investigate the alternative before voting and likely voted out of custom to stay.
But way to go WaPo and imply naïveté on the Brexiters.