No, radical policies won't drive election-winning turnout

[Zorro]

Despite what Sanders says, Democrats still have to persuade voters in the middle.

No myth is stronger in progressive circles than the magical, wonderworking powers of voter turnout. It’s become a sort of pixie dust that you sprinkle over your strenuously progressive positions to ward off any suggestion that they might turn off voters. That is how Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), now the Democratic presidential front-runner, has dealt with criticism that his more unpopular stances — including eliminating private health insurance, decriminalizing the border and covering undocumented immigrants in a government health plan — might cost him the votes he needs to beat President Trump.

Sanders’s explanation of why this is not a problem is simple, and he has repeated it endlessly. When a member of the Los Angeles Times editorial board asked him whether “a candidate as far to the left as you” would “alienate swing voters and moderates and independents,” the senator replied: “The only way that you beat Trump is by having an unprecedented campaign, an unprecedentedly large voter turnout.” Faiz Shakir, Sanders’s campaign manager, adds: “Bernie Sanders has very unique appeal amongst [the younger] generation and can inspire, I think, a bunch of them to vote in percentages that they have never voted before.”

This has remarkably little empirical support. Take the 2018 midterm elections, in which the Democrats took back the House (a net 40-seat gain), carried the House popular vote by almost nine points and flipped seven Republican-held governorships. Turnout in that election was outstanding, topping 49 percent — the highest midterm turnout since 1914 and up 13 points over the previous midterm, in 2014 — and the demographic composition of the electorate came remarkably close to that of a presidential election year. (Typically, midterm voters tend to be much older and much whiter than those in presidential elections.) This was due both to fewer presidential “drop-off” voters (people who voted in 2016 but not 2018) and to more midterm “surge” voters (those who voted in 2018 but not 2016).

Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of the Democrats’ improved performance came not from fresh turnout of left-of-center voters, who typically skip midterms, but rather from people who cast votes in both elections — yet switched from Republican in 2016 to Democratic in 2018. The data firm Catalist, whose numbers on 2018 are the best available, estimates that 89 percent of the Democrats’ improved performance came from persuasion — from vote-switchers — not turnout. In its analysis, Catalist notes, “If turnout was the only factor, then Democrats would not have seen nearly the gains that they ended up seeing … a big piece of Democratic victory was due to 2016 Trump voters turning around and voting for Democrats in 2018.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/no-radical-policies-wont-drive-election-winning-turnout/2020/02/14/07a0b602-4e97-11ea-b721-9f4cdc90bc1c_story.html

[Fresh_Start]

1. highly ideological candidates increase opposition turnout 3-8% more than their parties turnout

so Bernie would most likely be a net negative for control of the Senate and retaining control of the house...

midterm results where Our Revolution displaced a moderate democrat is competitive districts were 0 seats won.

[empedocles]

4. Nevertheless, but still, BS will still be 'surging' [in some direction], until the 'fall'

[George II]

2. It might, but certainly not to support those "radical policies". Look at New Hampshire....

Sanders boasts that he helped get the highest turnout in history. Yes, he did, but as we've seen they all went out to vote AGAINST him. He got half the votes he got last time, even with a record turnout.

[Vogon_Glory]

3. Fascinating. Only HALF the votes?

I didn’t know that.