There is a strain of progressive political commentary that treats "turning out new voters" as a sort of nuclear option, as the ultimate trump card, or simply as infiniti.
In this line of thinking, any electoral challenge can be overcome by "turning out new voters." Down by 30 points in Utah or Mississippi? No problem--just "turn out new voters" and someone to Elizabeth Warren's left will be the next governor.
There are not, obviously, an infinite number of new voters than be turned out to vote. While increasing voter turnout does usually result in an improvement in Democratic electoral performance--since unlikely, irregular and new voters skew heavily Democratic--there is only is a finite amount that you can actually improve it by. Thus, there is also a finite amount of electoral gain you can reap from it.
With this in mind, it is worth wondering what actually is the maximum amount of electoral gain that Democrats can achieve by increasing voter turnout.
Conveniently enough, just before the 2012 election Pew Research actually provided an answer to this question: 12%. That is, if there was 100.0% voter turnout, then President Obama margin of victory on Mitt Romney would have increased by 12%.
Above, you can see a graphic Pew produced detailing a poll they conducted of non-voters to arrive at this number. The poll showed Obama and Romney deadlocked at 47% each among likely voters, but that Obama's lead among all adults was 12% thanks to an enormous 59%-26% advantage among Americans who were not going to vote.
Now, here's the thing--we will never see 100.0% turnout, even if we implemented mandatory voting in the United States (something which I actually think we should implement--but that is a discussion for another day). There are limits to how far even the most inspiring candidate, with the most money and grassroots volunteers, backed up by the best data and tactically sound operation, can increase voter turnout. This is especially the case in presidential elections, which already feature pretty high voter turnout, relative to all other elections in the United States.
So, how high can you actually crank voter turnout, under the most ideal conditions? Let's try to figure this out:
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One possible answer could be turnout levels from the 2008 presidential election, which boasted the highest turnout of any election in the post-Jim Crow, post-26th amendment era: 61.6% of the voting eligible population.
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But since this post is about determining maximums, let's hypothesize an election that could go even higher than 2008 levels. Let's imagine a candidate who can be to Barack Obama what Barack Obama was to John Kerry, and improve turnout among the voter eligible population by the same amount that it went up from 2004 to 2008 (1.5%). That would improve turnout among the voting eligible population to 63.1%
Now, by the same token, how low could voter turnout go? If 63.1% is the current ceiling, what is the hypothetical floor?
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The lowest turnout in the post-1972 constitutional era was in 1996. Given that the 2014 midterm elections had the lowest turnout levels since the World War Two-impacted midterms of 1942, perhaps it is possible we could drop to 1996 levels once again in 2016.
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Probably not, though. Especially with the high stakes of a Supreme Court appointment, we might go low on turnout in 2016, but we won't hit rock bottom.
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So instead, let's use the figures from the 2000 election, which tied with 1988 for the second lowest in the modern era. That would give us a floor of 54.2% of the voting eligible population.
Overall, this gives us a maximum hypothetical range of 8.9% of the voting eligible population. Now we can quickly arrive at the maximum that Democrats can gain by bringing new voters into the process:
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In 2016, the voting eligible population will be 225,778,000.
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8.9% of that population is 20,094,242
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Assuming Democrats perform the same among that population that the Pew poll from 2012 showed Obama performing--and if the 13% undecided in that poll were allocated according to the same ratio at the 87% that had a preference--then the Democratic presidential nominee would improve her or his margin on the Republican nominee by 7.6 million votes (that comes from multiplying 20,094,242 by 0.38)
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If there actually was 63.1% turnout for highest office among the voter eligible population in 2016, that would make for 142,465,918 for president.
Put all that together, and then the total amount that voter turnout can improve Democratic performance in presidential elections is 5.36%.
Of course, even then, that is comparing near record low turnout to levels that have never actually been achieved since 18 year-olds were granted the franchise. A more realistic range of potential voter turnout in 2016 is probably from the levels of a below-average year like 1980 to an above-average year like 1992. That would be a difference in turnout levels of around 2.5%, which would boost the Democratic by nominee about 1.0% against his or her Republican opponent.
So, there you have it--turning out new voters could potentially net you 5.3% or 5.4% in the most utterly ideal conditions, but in reality would most likely get you 1.0%. That is definitely something--Gore would have loved it, no doubt. This is especially the case in a polarized environment where the number of swing voters is in steep decline. However, it also isn't a magic wand that overcomes any electoral challenge, or anything close to that.
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If, somehow, you managed to read this far, you might also now see why I am in favor of mandatory voting. By passing a single law, you could improve the Democratic margin on Republicans by 10-12% compared to the greatest voter turnout operation the party has ever seen. If that happened, whether to pass single-payer or improve on Obamacare with a public option would be the actual policy debate in this country, and not just something people argue over in Daily Kos comment threads.
