LONDON — On June 23, tens of thousands of young Britons will be gathered at the Glastonbury music festival, whose headliners include Coldplay, Muse and Adele. Others will be avidly following the European Soccer Championship in France or biting their nails in anticipation of the next episode of hit teenage soap “Hollyoaks.”
Oh, and there is the referendum that day asking them whether Britain should leave the European Union.
“Wait, are we even registered to vote?” Priya Patel, 25, asked her friend recently, as they waited outside a theater in east London to see their favorite stars arrive at the British Soap Awards.
Would she want Britain to stay in the European Union?
“Oh, definitely,” Ms. Patel, a medical practitioner, answered impatiently, switching her attention to her smartphone, visibly more interested in televised dramas than in the long-running tensions between her country and Brussels.
“Wait, what just happened?” she exclaimed as a “Hollyoaks” star rolled by in a car.
Holding the attention of young voters — and getting them to turn out on June 23 — is one of the biggest challenges for both sides in the campaign over Britain’s place in Europe, especially for the advocates of remaining in the European Union.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/world/europe/while-young-britons-favor-staying-in-eu-they-arent-big-on-voting.html
