The tide has turned. The Republican Party has once again ridden a red sea of voters back into power in the House of Representatives. After gaining 60 seats in the House and six seats in the Senate, Republicans look set to steer Congressional agenda-setting in the next two years. The voter base President Obama banked on in 2008—independents, young people, blacks, and Hispanics—ran away from Democrats in 2010, either swinging to the Republican side or staying at home. Voter frustration was evidenced by the relatively low turnout and weighed heavily on President Obama’s mind during his post-election speech.

The economy is still in the doldrums and unemployment is still high; it was natural for voters to be disenchanted with the current political make-up in Washington. Overwhelming dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party, however, does not perfectly equate with overwhelming dissatisfaction with the president. Real Clear Politics polls show that, while more than 70 percent of voters disapprove of Congress’s job, only around half disapprove of Obama’s performance.

The youth in particular seemed troubled about the state of U.S. politics—the youth vote was noticeably absent from Tuesday’s midterm election. Exit polls show that youth only made up nine percent of the vote in 2010, compared to 19 percent in 2008. A comparison with the 2006 midterm election tells a similar story: an estimated 20.4 percent of registered voters under 30 voted in 2010, compared to 23.5 percent in 2006.

Yet despite the drop in youth voter turnout, college students and twenty-somethings are still strongly Democratic. The under-30 demographic was the only group that Republicans did not win on Tuesday. Sociologists have been studying generational gaps in politics since the 1960s, but this newest divide seems different from past ones.

What accounts for the current political gap between the youth and the rest of America? Why does America as a whole vote Republican when our generation is clearly Democratic?

In February, the Pew Research Center published a report titled “Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next,” a survey-based examination of the social trends among young Americans. The study confirms the claim that we are far and away more Democratic than past generations. In 2008 around two-thirds of Millennials, defined as 18- to 19-year-olds in 2009, voted for Barack Obama, compared to 50 percent of older voters. By the end of 2009, Obama fever had died down, but 54 percent of Millennials still favored the Democratic Party. Similarly, Millennials still give Obama a higher job performance rating (57 percent) than any other generation.

Yet the Millennials’ outlook on American society is mixed at best. As any recent college graduate can tell you, our generation has been disproportionately affected by the economic downtown. Yet the Pew report shows that our generation is highly optimistic about the future. Despite the current economic circumstances, 88 percent of Millennials believe that they’ll make enough money in the future. Even in the face of a resounding Republican victory, our generally Democratic generation—and, by extension, the overly liberal Pomona student body—is not likely to get down in the dirt. If Pew re-polled Millennials today, perhaps Millennials would be a bit more pessimistic about the next two years, but I’d bet that their long-term outlook would still be quite rosy.

A New Vision for a New Millennium

Younger voters have historically been more Democratic than their older counterparts. The Silent Generation polled at 45 percent Democrat in 1954; 47 percent of Baby Boomers identified as Democrats in 1976. While our generation statistically matches up with previous waves of Democratic youth, the reasons underlying our leftward bent are different.

The subtitle of the Pew report sums up our generation succinctly: Confident. Connected. Open to Change. When asked what makes their generation unique, 24 percent of Millennials cited technology use. Recent technological advances have opened youthful minds to a continuous stream of news and 24/7 access to political discourse. Radio and TV had similar effects, but the ubiquity of the Internet is unrivalled as a source of political information. YouTube videos showcase the latest Jon Stewart lampoon of a Sarah Palin goof within minutes. If that single-handedly hasn’t made college-aged folks more liberal, I don’t know what has.

More importantly, seven percent of Millennial respondents identified “liberal/tolerant” as their generation’s unique quality. This is particularly striking when you consider that seven percent of Generation Xers (30- to 45-year-olds) noted “conservative/traditional” as their unique trait. Similarly, “values/morals” surfaced in the top five unique characteristics for the Boom and Silent Generations. Changing values, it seems, are at the core of the new Democratic streak among youth. The shift from old time moral discipline to post-modern liberalism underlies a change in the definition of what it is to be a Democrat.

The definitional change is rooted not just in a change of political values, but of social values. Interestingly, the Millennial generation is the only generation not to list “work ethic” as a characteristic that makes their generation unique. Millennials readily admit it: the majority say that older generations have superior moral values and work ethic.

The change in Millennial values helps explain our generation’s current political apathy. A naturally Democratic contingent, we recoil when faced with abrasive Republican opposition. Our confidence, technological connectedness, and relative openness to change (especially of the Obama variety) may make us optimistic about our economic futures, but they don’t change our tendency to complain about political squabbling rather than work for positive change.

Millennials’ relative lack of work ethic, however, moves beyond apathy. Nowadays, the youth are not forced to fight. I’m not referring to fighting in the sense of armed combat—what I’m talking about is the fight embodied by marches on Washington and sit-ins disrupting college classes. We joined together in celebrating the sweeping reforms promised in Obama’s victory, but we didn’t rally to get those changes passed in Congress.

Granted, a large part of this lack of fight is contextual. The 2000s aren’t the 1960s. Yes, we have 9/11 and the War on Terror. Without belittling the importance of these events or the lives lost, 9/11 and the wars in the Middle East—at least, for our generation—are no Vietnam. Terrorism and the subsequent misguided wars to eliminate it shook our society to its core, but they did not affect our generation as directly as past wars have uprooted the youth. Our generation knew that eventually the wars in the Middle East would fizzle out and life would, well, be the same as it had always been. Because America’s incursions abroad did not directly affect the Millennial generation in a large way, we have not had to learn how to fight.

This inability to fight has transferred to the polls. Millennials jumped on the Obama bandwagon as confident, Facebook-connected, and Change We Can Believe In hopefuls, but when Nov. 3 rolled around, the afterglow quickly transitioned into a post-election hangover. The Pew study shows that more than 50 percent of Millennials say that President Obama has failed to change the way Washington works. While they may be right, the collective response is not to fight for more change but to sit back and grumble as Tea Partiers’ cattle call pushed nearly 40 William Hung-esque politicians into office.

990 Years Left

While it may have been wasted this year, the Millennial vote will be even more important in 2012. Currently, 20- to 29-year-olds represent 13.8 percent of the population, or around 40 million people. If you extend the Millennial generation to 2003, there are more than 90 million Millennials. In just two years, this expanded generation will represent one out of every four eligible voters. By 2020, that number will jump to one in three. Our collective voting power will rival that of the Baby Boomer generation, and we need to make it count.

Beyond pure numbers, other demographics seem to show that Millennials will tend to be more Democratic. Black and Hispanic populations represent one-third of Millennials, compared to less than a quarter of older adults. Millennials are also on track to be more educated: a record 39.6 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds were enrolled in college in 2008. Historically, blacks, Hispanics and the college-educated have tended to vote blue, which bodes well for the Democrats.

Statistics alone, though, won’t make Millennials get out and fight. Dissatisfaction left untreated festers, fueling the partisan fire and polarizing America’s political landscape even further. Moderates are already the obvious losers in this year’s election. In the pursuit of rational discourse and a stable political environment, Millennials need to stand up and fight for their values. We might not have a Vietnam, but the economy, deficit, health care, and education are more than enough to fight for.