Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. The 2026 environment is very favorable for the Democrats, but a hard leftward shift could spoil their chances.
A Washington Post-Ipsos poll released last Thursday illustrated the problems posed by the rise of the D.S.A.
A solid 75 percent of Democratic voters said they would consider voting for “a candidate for president who identifies as a democratic socialist.” Among all registered voters, however, a majority (54-42) said that they would not consider supporting a democratic socialist presidential candidate, driven by Republicans (88 percent no, 10 percent yes) and independents and other voters (54 to 36).
Even more decisive were the responses when the Post-Ipsos poll asked, “How much do you like or dislike political leaders who identify as democratic socialists?” A third (33 percent) of Democrats said they like democratic socialist political leaders and 10 percent said they dislike them. Among all voters, in contrast, 42 percent said they disliked democratic socialist political leaders and 17 percent said they liked such politicians — Republicans 70 dislike to 3 like and independents and other voters 30 to 12.
In other words, when it comes to socialism, Democratic voters are the outliers, in opposition to the views of voters overall and especially to the views of independents and Republicans.
In terms of actual politics, the outlier status of democratic socialism reflects the concentration of socialist candidates’ success in deep-blue urban areas where Republicans have little or no chance of winning. At the same time, Republicans are relishing the prospect of capitalizing on voters’ distrust of socialism in purple districts and states, even going so far as to financially support the further-left candidate in Democratic primaries.
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Michael Kistner, a political scientist at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service and an author of research on these issues with Canes-Wrone, wrote that his view “is that the increasing prominence of D.S.A. and Justice Democrats likely hurts Democratic candidates’ standing with moderate and independent voters on the margin. The reason is not performance in these candidates’ own races, should they win the nomination. Typically these candidates win in solidly Democratic districts. The more salient concern is how these candidates affect the party brand of Democrats nationally.”
There is “good evidence,” Kistner argued, “that party brands — the general reputation and perceived positioning of the party, as seen by the general public — are real and affect election outcomes.”
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In perhaps the sharpest critique of D.S.A. and other groups on the Democratic left, Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at the centrist think tank the Third Way, wrote by email responding to my query: “Since 2018, the moderate New Democrat Coalition Action Fund has managed to flip 50 House seats from red to blue. The D.S.A., Justice Democrats, Our Revolution and the Sunrise Movement can claim zero red-to-blue flipped seats in that time.”
