The Democratic Socialists of America’s hot socialist summer continues. Although the election remains too close to call as of this writing, Abdul El-Sayed looks likely to prevail in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, adding to a momentum that has been building for months. In June, a slate endorsed by the organization’s highest-profile elected official, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, defeated three incumbent Democrats in the state’s congressional primaries. DSA-backed candidates have also defeated establishment Democrats in Colorado, Washington, DC, and Los Angeles, underscoring the organization’s growing clout. The winning streak isn’t over. In Wisconsin, DSA member Francesca Hong holds a comfortable lead ahead of this month’s Democratic primary for governor.
It is hardly surprising that the Democratic establishment is panicking. “The DSA poses a fundamental threat to the Democratic Party and to the nation as a whole,” a former Clinton State Department official told The Wall Street Journal. Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville went further, arguing it is “time for Democrats to talk the S-word: schism.” The Atlantic’s James Kirchick described the DSA as a “parasite” and argued that Democratic leaders should purge its supporters.
But no state Democratic Party—which is governed by state election law, not party rules—has the authority to exclude anyone from registering to vote or running in its primaries. And even if the DNC could somehow excise every DSA member from the state voter rolls, it wouldn’t stop the left-wing insurgency. The DSA is growing because it has tapped into the frustration and alienation felt by a significant segment of the Democratic coalition, particularly voters under thirty-five.
Mamdani won roughly 75 percent of voters under thirty last November, while youth turnout reached about 28 percent of eligible voters, roughly 20 percent higher than in New York City’s 2013 mayoral election. His endorsed Congressional slate performed nearly as well. A late July poll found that voters under fifty supported El-Sayed by 42 percentage points over his establishment-backed opponent, Haley Stevens. The only age group in which Stevens led was of those over sixty. In Wisconsin, polling shows Francesca Hong pulling in similar numbers, winning 66 percent of voters under twenty-nine, and 51 percent of those under forty-four.
“It is the message, more than any particular personality, that is driving their success.”
Mamdani may be a once-in-a-generation political talent. But the fact that DSA candidates across the country are attracting similar support from younger voters suggests that it is the message, more than any particular personality, that is driving their success. A recent Cato Institute poll found that more than 60 percent of Americans aged 18-29 hold a favorable view of socialism.
It isn’t easy to divine exactly what young voters mean by the term. As pollster Rachel Janfaza wrote on X: “I’ve been asking Gen Z voters in our focus groups to define socialism, and there’s not a real consensus on what it actually means.” But many, she found, identify policies like paid family leave as “socialist”—in effect, amounting to a more generous welfare state.
That young voters, especially those with a college degree, have soured on the existing economy isn’t surprising. For one thing, even as the cost of a degree continues to rise, AI is creating enormous uncertainty about future job security for newly degreed professionals. Inflation and especially rising housing costs have made life hard for those just starting out. A poll by the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School found that voters under twenty-nine see the rising cost of living as a generational crisis.
This sense of economic distress is paired with historic levels of distrust in politics as usual. The same Harvard poll shows that members of Congress receive nearly identical approval ratings regardless of party, with only about a quarter of Gen Z voters expressing support. On foreign policy, more than half of voters aged between eighteen and thirty-four now sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis. Taken together, all of this discontent adds up to a political tinderbox that was waiting for a spark.
Centrist Democrats, especially those concerned with winning in swing districts, have legitimate reasons to be concerned about how the DSA’s increasing prominence will impact otherwise winnable statewide races, like those in Michigan and Wisconsin. The DSA platform is full of nuggets that are toxic to many working-class swing voters, from open borders to defunding the police to racial reparations; same goes for the rhetoric of some of the organization’s leadership.
But as long as the DSA candidates are seen as a force for change by voters fed up with the status quo, there is little party leaders can do to stop them. Moreover, because electoral politics is about stitching together the widest coalition possible, Democrats can’t afford to write off what is now a large segment of its electorate.
Some have analogized the rise of the DSA to the MAGA movement’s takeover of the Republican Party, and the parallels are real. Donald Trump identified a critical segment of the Republican electorate that had become alienated from the party establishment and focused relentlessly on issues that other candidates were unwilling to address, chiefly immigration and trade.
While Trump and the DSA appeal to very different constituencies, both—like populist movements more broadly—tap into a perceived loss of status among their supporters. Trump’s initial appeal was rooted in white blue-collar voters who saw their cultural standing threatened by globalization and increasingly racial and ethnic diversity. The DSA, by contrast, draws support from college-educated voters confronting professional and economic disappointment in an increasingly hostile economy. In both cases, that sense of frustration and decline has turned them against the political establishments of their own parties.
But while Trump was able to ride that wave to two historically narrow political victories, a less forgiving Electoral College map means Democrats must knit together a broader coalition to take back the presidency. Centrists concerned about the party’s electoral viability must thread a very fine needle. They must address the grievances fueling the DSA’s growth and demonstrate a willingness to break with an out-of-touch party establishment while maintaining enough independence from the left to appeal to the broader electorate. Whether any politician has the skill to pull that off—or whether the DSA will continue to fill the vacuum left by a crumbling Democratic center—will largely determine the course of the 2028 campaign.