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.
Their number has swelled more than twentyfold in the past decade, but still totals only around 120,000. The prime target is the downwardly mobile millennial. Michael Lange, a political analyst and DSA member, says the question to identify prospective joiners is: “Are you under 50 and do you rent?” At its latest survey, in 2021, four-fifths of DSA members over the age of 25 had a college degree—twice the share of American adults. A third had a postgraduate degree and a third were gay or queer. Ashik Siddique, a co-chair of the DSA, says it is the largest queer membership organisation in the country. Members found to be working as cops can be expelled.
Therein lies the paradox: a group that claims to represent the working class looks and speaks nothing like it. On all manner of social issues, from trans rights to policing to immigration to abortion, college graduates are far to the left of blue-collar workers. Take protections for trans people, a plank of the DSA platform. Only half of working-class people tell pollsters that it should be illegal to fire or evict a trans person, compared with 82% of left-leaning college grads.
On economics, too, working-class and older voters tend to be more sceptical of the sweeping changes promised by the young new left, says Adam Carlson, a pollster. Mr Siddique, sounding a bit like Lenin, says the DSA’s task is to cultivate a working-class consciousness. The wrinkle is that working-class voters believe strongly in merit and hard work, notes Nicholas Jacobs, a political scientist at Colby College. They tend to be less enthusiastic about expanding government services while distrusting pointy-headed types who use words like “systemic”. Tellingly, in polling, only white left-leaning college grads count “tax the rich” as a top-ten priority.