This may have something to do with the president. Sixty percent of millennials say that they don't follow news about national politics closely. All the same, President Obama leaves a bad taste in their mouths: millennials give the chief executive negative marks in his handling of everything from the economy to health care, the federal budget deficit, foreign policy, and race relations (although on this last, the numbers are closer). Seventy-six percent call health care important in determining their vote. Nineteen percent are not enrolled in health insurance. Fifty-seven percent disapprove of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Young people are a potently disapproving bunch. They disapprove more strongly of Republican performance in Congress than of Democratic performance (72 percent to 60 percent). Correspondingly, they better trust the Democratic party to steward the economy. But there's little fervor for the process. A full 80 percent of young people who completed the interview—and this among those displaying participant cooperation—would not consider themselves politically active or engaged. (This is the same percentage that holds a Facebook account.)

Maybe this is because only 10 percent believe their Congress members in Washington represent their constituents more strongly than their donors, their party, and themselves. There's a lot that needs to be proved to 18-29-year-old Americans. On the whole, millennials are, as Harvard Institute of Politics Director Maggie Williams put it, "potentially up-for-grabs."