A lot of Brexit voters don't actually know what the European Union is

Google found that many residents of the U.K. were searching for answers to questions such as &#039;What is the EU?&#039; just hours before casting their votes.

(Image credit: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

published 24 June 2016

More than 17 million Britons voted Thursday to leave the European Union, an international organization to which the U.K. had belonged since the European Economic Community was absorbed by the EU in 1993. Good riddance!

Except, it seems, a solid chunk of the tens of millions of voters who weighed in on the referendum might not actually know what they voted for:

The Washington Post notes that roughly eight hours after the polls closed in Britain, Google announced that the search rate for “what happens if we leave the EU” had more than tripled.

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So, for you curious Googlers out there: 1) The European Union is a both politically- and economically-based union of 28 (soon to be 27) countries on the European continent, which allows its member countries access to a large free-trade network and joint security interests; and 2) We're about to find out what happens, but so far, things are not looking great.

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Kimberly Alters is the news editor at TheWeek.com. She is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.