CNN poll: Democratic socialism nearly matches MAGA support
17% of respondents identified as democratic socialists, just one point less than members of the MAGA movement
A new CNN/SSRS poll of 2,077 Americans are nearly as likely to identify as a democratic socialist vs a member of the MAGA movement. 17% of respondents are democratic socialists compared to 18% for MAGA.
The poll comes amid surging popularity for politicians such as Zohran Mamdani, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders and sliding support for Donald Trump as his unpopular immigration enforcement campaign and occupation of democratic cities continues.
An August Data For Progress poll found that 42% of overall voters say they support democratic socialism (including 74% of Democrats, up from roughly four in 10 in 2016). And a CNN clip from September shows that among Democrats, socialism has a net popularity of +36, up from +10 in 2010.
This increase comes as a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 62% of Democrats want a change in party leadership, and after the Democratic Party hit -32 net favorability in August, a three-decade low.
This gap in support between democratic socialist and establishment Democrats widens as the mainstream party falls out of step with their voters' opinions and is perceived as beholden to special interests, corporations and billionaires.
At least six in 10 voters across every major demographic group agreed with the statement “Corporations and the wealthy have too much influence in the party I usually vote for”.
For example, only 8% of Democrats approve of Israel's military actions in Gaza. Yet Track AIPAC has labelled only 22 Congresspeople "AIPAC-free" out of 258 incumbent Democrats. And at a time when the left wants their leaders to stand up to Trump, "weak" and "ineffective" are among the most common words Democrats use to describe their party.
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) defines democratic socialism as the belief that ordinary, working people should control the government and economy, rather than corporations and billionaires. The organization also emphasizes a rejection in authoritarianism, a key reason for it's recent growth to become the largest socialist organization in US history with 80,000 members.
DSA's definition, and the views of US politicians identifying as democratic socialists, tend to align with the political and economic systems of Scandinavian "social democracies" like Norway.
DSA's growth is likely to continue as Trump's militarization of American cities intensifies and has the potential to explode as AOC considers a 2028 presidential run.
