As results began to trickle in following June’s general election in the U.K., it became clear why the pollsters missed the results by such a wide margin. Their own data showed the young voters were planning to turn out to vote for Jeremy Corbyn; yet, due to their poor turnout history, many pollsters adjusted their final results towards the Tories. Pollsters just assumed young voters would not turn out in as great a number as they indicated due to their poor turnout history.

Oh, but they did. Although overall turnout for the election was already above 2015 totals, hitting 68.7 percent, younger voters surpassed even that margin. 72 percent of 18 to 25-year-olds voted in Thursday’s election. In the 2015 general election, 43 percent of the age group voted. That’s an increase of two-thirds, an unprecedented increase in turnout for a single age group over a span of just two years!

But, I thought young voters couldn’t be trusted to turn out? At least, that’s what the Democratic party elites and the media seemed to indicate, despite the signals that Sen. Bernie Sanders was tapping into something extraordinary among America’s youth. The Vermont senator earned a higher percentage of young votes than President Obama did. Yet, the Democratic Party put forward a candidate with heavily underwater approval ratings among younger voters. In many polls, her favorable ratings among young voters were lower than any other age group, including those 65 and older. For many young voters, Trump fear tactics were not nearly enough to win a vote for Secretary Clinton.

The turnout for 18 to 29-year-olds in the 2016 election was just 51 percent. Of the 23.7 million that voted, 2 million voters, nearly one in ten, cast a ballot for a third-party candidate. These numbers are abysmal by any standard. However, what we learned from the UK’s election is that political apathy is a treatable condition. In a span of just two years, the Labour party managed to increase turnout by 29 percentage points. Young voters are not impossible to motivate, they just have to be inspired, not terrified.

If millennial turnout increased in the US by 29 percentage points, it would have meant nearly an extra 13.5 million ballots cast. If the voting trends were extrapolated, this would have meant an extra 4.5 million votes for Secretary Clinton, moving up her vote total by another 3%, more than enough to have won the election handily.

There are other benefits of focusing on inspiring young voters to cast ballots, rather than to just bank in the base, which often consists of older voters. First of all, old voters are not going to stick around forever. Young voters have a lot more elections left; building a proactive strategy to win over young voters now will save the party a lot of grief once the older base is no longer around. We also know that once you vote once, you are far more likely to vote again. Increasing turnout among young voters is not simply a one-off thing. Once a candidate is able to motivate millions of new voters to get to the polls, it is far more likely that they will stick around for the following elections.

Young voters are not just the future, but they are the key to winning elections. I must admit, even I thought the condition of apathy to be near incurable. The UK’s shocking election result, however, should give politicos and Democratic party strategists in the US a moment of pause. While Theresa May was busy scaring the population into thinking Jeremy Corbyn was a terror-sympathizing monster, the Labour leader was sticking to his message of hope and inspiration. It paid off. Young voters came out for Corbyn’s party, culminating in a turnout surge that will hopefully prove to be an effective example for the US in the future.

Quick note: I wrote this right after the British election, but only now got around to posting it.