Pundits have been making full-throated claims about millennials, since, well, the millenium.

Representatives from several industries and sectors (I wrote that story) trying to figure out what to do about millennials coming of age and infiltrating their world.

Here’s the thing: millennials are different than any other generation that came before them. But when it comes to ideology, they’re just average Americans.

Millennials came of age with an unprecedented level of access to communication, information and education at their fingertips — the Internet.

But at the core of it all, they’re living, thinking, breathing and believing (that part is important!) human beings.

In his recent post on Campaigns & Elections’ Campaign Insider blog (I used to work there and am proud of the folks who do), Justin Wallin, the COO of Probolsky Research, says “millennials have little time for campaigns” because “they’re, well, confused.”

Wallin cites research from a Reason-Rupe survey that references millennial “incoherence,” which it doesn’t look like he got from Reason-Rupe’s 105-page report, but rather from this Vox article.

In addition, Wallin’s statement that millennials don’t have time for campaigns doesn’t appear to be very well backed up. By the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s definition, there are nine millennial members of the U.S. Congress. Several more ran (and lost, sorry Nick!) in last year’s election cycle. So to say millennials don’t have time for campaigns is wrong to a certain degree.

Reason-Rupe’s report does say this about millennials, though:

They trust neither political party, are social liberals and fiscal centrists, and are supportive of both business and government. They favor free markets, but aren’t sure whether markets or government best drive income mobility. In all, millennials are neither a Democratic nor a Republican generation; they remain politically unclaimed.

Vox’s Dylan Matthews, in the article that Wallin (indirectly?) quotes, does, in fact, call millennial political views “incoherent,” according to the survey results.

(Pew Research Center)

I wouldn’t go so far to call it incoherent, but rather “different.” You see, Wallin, Matthews and countless other columnists and writers who pontificate on millennial political activism always seem to assume one thing: that millennials collectively believe together as a single generation. That’s an incredibly bold assumption to make. In a Pew Research study out today, millennials are pretty evenly split (okay, so they lean a little more Democratic) among party lines.

Pew says 51 percent of millennials are Democrats or lean Democratic, and 35 percent of millennials are Republicans or lean Republican. The discrepancy, or “incoherence” in Matthews’ and Wallin’s interpretations of millennial political ideology actually captures that divide pretty well — if you acknowledge that millennials aren’t one giant political bloc.

A few grafs down in his C&E piece, Wallin wrote:

This generation thinks the economy will improve with more and less government spending. They believe universal health care is the government’s responsibility, but disapprove of Obamacare. They’ve shunned both parties, with half of Millennials identifying as independents, yet are more likely than any other generation to approve of Congress.

Okay, so yes, more conservative members of the generation think the economy will improve with less government spending. Liberal members feel the opposite. Same with the statistic about Obamacare.

And on the comment about shunning both parties —Gallup found in early 2014 that Americans as a whole, not just millennials, are shunning political parties.

This “incoherence” just shows that millennials are politically diverse, not that they’re contradictory.

Let’s refocus and remember that Wallin’s C&E post in Campaign Insider is directed toward political consultants, so Wallin is looking to inform consultants on how to best “decode” the millennial generation.

Simply put: Millennials are “detached from institutions,” be they political, cultural religious or media. Young people are less likely to join a political party, be married, believe in God, or participate in organized religion.

He’s likely right on all of that, which is why I’m confused that Wallin doesn’t make the point in the rest of the argument that consultants should be targeting millennials as those invested in politics, instead of as a whole “incoherent” generation.

Consultants should not try to capture the “millennial vote,” because the millennial vote is gone. Millennials are old enough, smart enough and mature enough to think for themselves politically and believe what they want, and that’s not necessarily something that can be categorized generationally, especially when today’s Pew study shows the partisan differences among the generation.

If consultants want to effectively target millennials, they should target them as they would target any other politically-active member of society from any other generation. The only difference is that in order to get in front of millennials they may have to use other means.

Political ideology is the only point I will concede in the argument that millennials are just like every generation before it, because in most cases, millennials are exceptionally different.

In Generation X, Baby Boomers, etc., there are Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Socialists (hey, Bernie!), Libertarians and several other flavors of political ideology.

Guess what? Millennials have all of those too.

The difference: all of the points about millennials we’ve touched on so far only apply to the politically-active part of the generation.

There are a few other categories of millennials and how they relate to politics — but more on that later…