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

Re:The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after vo... by maxerickson on Friday June 24, 2016 @12:05PM (#11970873)
Lots of people didn't vote, so leave won even though only 37% of the population voted that way.
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Re:The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after vo... by Karunamon on Friday June 24, 2016 @12:19PM (#11971006)
And this is why statistics can be misleading - 72% of the population turned out for the vote. Almost a record.

It's pointless at best, actively harmful at worst, to compare the voters vs the non voters in an attempt to make the result seem undemocratic. The non voters abandoned their ability to influence this issue; if they had wanted to participate, they had plenty of opportunity to do so.

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Re:The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after vo... by vacri on Friday June 24, 2016 @08:02PM (#11974437)
72% of voters, not 72% of the population. Kids don't vote, neither do transient workers and a few other demographics.
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Re:The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after vo... by flubert on Friday June 24, 2016 @01:53PM (#11971932)
Honest question, what percentage of the population voted to join the EU originally?
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Re:The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after vo... by T-A on Friday June 24, 2016 @02:56PM (#11972430)
67.23% of all votes cast. Turnout was 64.62%, so 43.2% of all registered voters [1]. As fraction of total population, it was 56.23 million in 1975 [2] and the total number of Yes votes was 17,378,581, so 30.91%.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_European_Commun...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingd...

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