Last Tuesday, many of us headed out to the polls to take part in what we thought would be a resounding repudiation of the Biden administration and Democrats more generally. But as we’ve learned since then, it didn’t work out that way.

The GOP does appear to have eked out a House majority, but it failed to retake the Senate regardless of the result of the December 6 runoff between Democrat incumbent Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker. Still, unless Republicans take back that Georgia Senate seat, they’ll hand the Democrats a slightly larger 51-49 majority — which would render moderate Dems Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema less powerful as potential roadblocks to their party’s legislative mischief.

Clearly, Republicans have a lot of soul-searching to do, but one polling fact screams out more than anything: The red wave was broken by a united front of 18- to 29-year-olds. While Twitter users are celebrating Generation Z, the cohort that did the damage is actually a mixture of the older members of that group and younger Millennial voters. Indeed, that age group went Democrat by a whopping 28 points — and it turned out at a level beyond what we’ve come to expect from an age cohort generally known for electoral apathy.

So these young voters got off their couches and out of their basements. Or perhaps they didn’t, given the post-pandemic retention of mail-in voting and the conversion of Election Day into Election Season.

First and foremost, the young women in this group — those of prime child-bearing age — were successfully frightened by Democrats and their media allies into believing that the Dobbs decision was a stripping away of their “right” to have an abortion. Next, those who went to college and took out loans for the privilege were lured in by Joe Biden’s fruitless talk of forgiving a portion of those student loans, and they no doubt noticed that Republicans objected to the shameless giveaway.

But even more important, the kids just don’t understand. “Their entire perspective on politics comes from people like Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, and whatever TikTok influencer they decided to start getting their information from,” opined political analyst Brandon Morse. “They’ve been hit over the head repeatedly with these talking points that Republicans are taking away women’s rights, hate people of color, are homophobic, etc., etc., and any sources of news that would tell them otherwise have been deemed as the hubs of absolute evil. But once we accept that Gen Z voting Democrat, by and large, is the symptom then we can start focusing on the disease.”

Many would nod their head in approval at Morse’s contention that conservatives must wade into both the educational system and the culture wars and think twice about sending their kids off to State U for indoctrination. There’s some promise on those fronts, but we gave the Left a generation’s head start.

Yet there also will come a point where it’s necessary to be morally straight in an evil world. Cultural commentator Joel Abbott makes that compelling case:

True conservatism, as embodied in a man like [Florida Governor Ron] DeSantis, represents the civic leadership that can create a field for such dreams to grow. When that happens, civilization-changing journeys start happening.

But it doesn’t start with Ronny D. It starts with you and me.

It starts with telling our children and our communities why investing in marriage, families, faithfulness, and obedience to God’s designs is actually the most exciting and adventurous thing we could ever imagine — and that it gives them the identity and belonging they so deeply crave.

Explain to them how investing in population growth, individual liberty, and financial responsibility is actually the quickest and most moral route to taking care of the environment and protecting against fascism.

So stop lamenting about the outcome of an election. There’s work to do. Get to it.

Perhaps some folks have gotten too wrapped up in the results of this election to remember the main point, which is that God is in control. Unless and until the government cracks down on faith to the point of overt persecution, we are free to live our lives as examples to those young voters who went the other way this time. If we have faith, and if we demonstrate an abiding commitment, they may just come around one day.