In Jacobin, Branko Marcetic argued that recent polls show socialism's appeal is broader than the "young, well-off, and highly educated white progressives" it says the general narrative assigns it, citing Gallup's 43% positive rating and its rise among independents to 45%, and New York Times/Siena crosstabs in which white voters rated socialism least favorably while Black and Latino voters were at +4 each. He argued the relevant comparison is the MAGA movement, which he said had a 24% positive rating in April 2023 before winning in 2024. He contrasted that with DSA's membership, which he said the organization's internal polling put at 60% white, down from 85% five years ago.
The piece draws on the Gallup August 3–24 survey, a New York Times/Siena national likely-voter poll, and a Liberal Currents/Center for Strategic Politics survey of 683 Democratic voters published September 21.
President Trump met Mayor Zohran Mamdani at Gracie Mansion on September 21 and told him "Hopefully you're going to be a great one," the AP reported, in a story describing Republicans from Georgia and Texas to New York and Michigan as focused on the rise of democratic socialism in the midterm season; Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Tom Emmer had called Mamdani "Comrade Mamdani" and "Mamdani the commie" at Trump's midterm convention in Texas earlier in the month. Republican strategist Doug Heye said of the meeting, "It doesn't help." Mamdani said, "I will continue to have conversations with the president, and frankly, anyone who can deliver relief to the people of this city."
The Guardian reported it was the first presidential visit to Gracie Mansion in 45 years, since Ronald Reagan met Ed Koch there in 1981.
Elaine Kamarck and Jordan Muchnick reported results from Brookings' Primaries Project, which coded 300 primary candidates in 33 competitive House districts and 10 Senate races. The authors found that more mainstream candidates in both parties outperformed their flanks — MAGA/Trump conservatives won 26.7 percent of their races and progressive Democrats 17.8 percent — and that of five DSA candidates in the sample, only William Lawrence of Michigan won his primary, after letting his DSA membership lapse in July 2026. The authors wrote that "the hype surrounding the Democratic Party's purported resurgence of left-wing strength may be greater than the underlying evidence suggests."
This is the sixth iteration of the Brookings Primaries Project, drawing its competitive-race universe from Cook Political Report Partisan Voting Index ratings between D+2 and R+2.
Jacobin published the second study from the Center for Working-Class Politics and Joan C. Williams, a survey experiment fielded April–June 2026 in which more than 40,000 respondents evaluated nearly 800,000 hypothetical candidate profiles. The report finds that a six-part formula leading with working-class economics added 10.9 points to Democrats' vote share among working-class voters and about 7.8 points among college-educated Democrats, and that a $17 minimum wage outperformed $15 by 2 points among the 45 economic policies tested. The study was produced by Jacobin with support from the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.
The study follows "The Left's Coalition Crisis," released earlier in summer 2026 by the Center for Working-Class Politics and the Equality Action Center.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched a six-week, 20-state bus tour, the "Free Enterprise Express," urging midterm voters to reject socialism, departing this weekend for stops in Pennsylvania and New York in support of Republican candidates in three competitive House districts. The Chamber plans to promote more than 30 candidates as part of what CEO Suzanne Clark called a multiyear "nine-figure" effort. The Chamber's September 18 announcement said the tour builds on a $100 million contribution, the largest donation in its 114-year history.
The Chamber's announcement describes more than 50 events across the 20 states before the November 3 election.
Raman released her first general-election ad, a 30-second spot narrated by Bob Odenkirk and timed to air around Monday's Emmy Awards, in which she promises to "fight to keep Hollywood in Hollywood" and says Mayor Karen Bass has not acted with enough urgency on entertainment job losses. Bass's campaign said Raman "never introduced a single piece of legislation to help the film industry" and recused herself from four of seven film-permitting items in March 2026 because of her husband's industry work; the paper noted Raman participated in the other film votes that day. FilmLA reported 4,711 permitted shoot days in Greater Los Angeles in the second quarter of 2026, down 12.7 percent from a year earlier.
In The Wall Street Journal, Joshua Chaffin cataloged the internal caucuses of the Democratic Socialists of America — among them the Socialist Majority Caucus, Groundwork, North Star, Bread & Roses, and the Communist Caucus — and sorted them by their positions on electoral pragmatism versus revolutionary strategy. The piece traced the caucuses' competition over endorsements and seats on the organization's National Political Committee.
The piece's tally of DSA primary wins draws on an August 2026 Brookings Institution analysis of DSA-aligned candidates' performance this cycle.
At the two-day Republican midterm convention in Dallas September 9–10, speakers repeatedly invoked communism, socialism, and Marxism, with Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed the most frequent target; Rogers said of his opponent, "He's a con man. I'm a law man," and Trump said of democratic socialists, "actually they're communists." Trump promised American adults $5,000 if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate. NPR reported thousands of empty seats on both days, including almost all of the upper level.
The House passed a resolution condemning socialism the previous week, with 8 Democrats joining Republicans.
Block Club Chicago's Quinn Myers reported that Chicago DSA's membership has grown to 3,200 people, about 1,000 of them added over the past year, while national DSA membership passed 120,000 in July. The chapter declined to endorse incumbent alderpeople Jeanette Taylor and Daniel La Spata; Taylor called the group "anti-Black," and WTTW News reporting cited in the piece said the chapter dropped La Spata after he declined to identify as "anti-Zionist." Critics quoted in the piece attributed the friction to weak coalition-building across the city's neighborhoods.
Six DSA-backed candidates were elected to Chicago's 50-member City Council in 2023, matching the caucus's 2019 total.
Willamette Week reported that Councilors Koyama Lane, Morillo, and Green — the three DSA members among the six council incumbents seeking reelection — have each logged more than 1,600 campaign contributions through the city's Small Donor Elections program, nearly 750 more than their centrist colleagues running for reelection. Per the program's website, Koyama Lane has received $200,000 in matching funds, Morillo $160,000, and Green $162,000. The paper reported the only nonincumbent at similar levels is District 4 candidate Eli Arnold, at $194,000.
The Small Donor Elections program matches contributions by up to 10 to 1; the general election is November 3, 2026.
In the Guardian, Alice Speri reported that left-of-center candidates in the 2026 midterms differ in their relationships to DSA, sorting them into longtime organizers such as New York's Claire Valdez, non-members who share the group's priorities such as Michigan's Abdul El-Sayed, and longtime socialists who joined only recently such as Colorado's Melat Kiros and Pennsylvania's Chris Rabb. The piece cited DSA membership of 120,000 and a poll it said found one-third of Democrats identify as "socialist." It reported that after DSA candidates won nine of ten races the group contested in New York City in June, Third Way announced a $15 million effort against them.
The Conversation · on DSA-affiliated members' prospective leverage in the next Congress
Political scientists SoRelle Wyckoff Gaynor of the University of Virginia and Charlie Hunt of Boise State University argued that the influence of DSA-affiliated lawmakers in the next Congress — with at least a half-dozen candidates they described as all but guaranteed seats — will depend on party margins, bloc cohesion and leadership's institutional advantages rather than on numbers alone. They cited the Freedom Caucus as precedent, including Kevin McCarthy's 15-ballot speaker election, and noted median model predictions giving Democrats House control by as many as 30 seats.
Reuters interviewed more than two dozen activists, strategists and community leaders on whether DSA-aligned nominees can win Black voters in November, reporting that some voters want candidates focused on housing, healthcare and living costs rather than on Gaza or policing. The piece reported that Angie Nixon overcame a more-than-16-to-1 fundraising disadvantage against Alex Vindman while running up large margins in Black communities, and that Republican nominee Mike Rogers ran unopposed in Michigan and has built a $4.5 million campaign fund. DSA national co-chair Ashik Siddique said the group focuses on "economic solutions that bring people together across identity differences."
In Jacobin, sociologist Vivek Chibber argued that organized labor is the only viable mass base for the socialist left, and that socialists supply a direction unions lack; he said that without a revived labor movement, progressive legislation will stay within limits employers find acceptable. He cited overall union density just below 11 percent, private-sector density around 6 percent and public-sector density around 33 percent, against union approval he described as the highest since the 1950s.
The piece is adapted from an episode of Jacobin's Confronting Capitalism podcast, in which Chibber was interviewed by Cale Brooks.
Campaign finance watchdog Seth Woolley filed a complaint Monday with Multnomah County and state elections officials alleging Sharon Meieran's county chair campaign and her political action committee, Fixing Multnomah County, committed eight campaign finance violations. The complaint says the PAC collected just over $70,000 from a handful of donors to fund a "Comprehensive Multnomah County Turnaround Plan" that Woolley argues should have been reported as an in-kind contribution to her campaign. Meieran denied wrongdoing, calling the complaint "a cynical effort to make it seem like it's somehow cheating that I put substance before politics and spent a year working with experts to write a comprehensive plan to fix the county."
Woolley's complaint contends the alleged violation should be prosecuted as a Class C felony; Meieran faces Julia Brim-Edwards and Shannon Singleton in the November 2026 chair race.
The Mercury reported that Go Portland Go, which filed as a political action committee with the state in April and calls itself a "grassroots coalition," has received more than $130,000 in contributions, including $32,000 from the nonprofit Partnership for Progress and $25,000 from Columbia Sportswear CEO Tim Boyle. The paper reported that Partnership for Progress mailers have blamed the council's four DSA members — Morillo, Koyama Lane, Green, and Kanal — for what the group characterizes as the city's decline, and that the PAC's endorsement criteria include funding police and reducing taxes. Restaurateur Earl Ninsom withdrew his six restaurants from the group's coalition list on August 28 after the Mercury asked about their participation.
The Portland council general election is November 3, 2026.
The Drift · on NYC-DSA governance tensions under the Mamdani administration
In The Drift, Piper French reported on NYC-DSA's first eight months with Zohran Mamdani in City Hall, describing disputes inside the chapter over housing policy, policing, and an October 2025 resolution that put supporting the mayor "before the task of critique." The piece said NYC-DSA has more than doubled since the 2024 election cycle began to some 15,000 members, that DSA counts 120,000 members nationally, and that the Socialist Majority and Groundwork caucuses hold 53 of the chapter's 71 citywide leadership seats. French wrote that the chapter issued its first public statement criticizing Mamdani in June, over the police commissioner's announcement that the NYPD would hire 580 new officers; the piece said Mamdani backtracked five days later.
NYC-DSA adopted a resolution in October 2025 putting support for the incoming administration "before the task of critique."
Hamilton Nolan argued that unions should endorse and back socialist candidates, writing that socialists have been winning elections across the US often without organized labor's support. As evidence he cited the 2025 New York City mayoral race, in which he said only a small number of local unions such as UAW Region 9A endorsed Zohran Mamdani, while 1199SEIU, 32BJ SEIU, and the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council endorsed Andrew Cuomo and the United Federation of Teachers made no primary endorsement.
Nolan is the author of the 2024 book on the labor movement, "The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor."
CNBC interviewed Colorado's two Democratic House nominees: Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old lawyer and DSA member who defeated Rep. Diana DeGette in the 1st District primary in June, and retired Navy Rear Adm. Eileen Laubacher, running against Rep. Lauren Boebert in the Republican-leaning 4th District. Laubacher had $3.6 million on hand as of June 30 to Boebert's $247,000, per FEC filings; Kiros attributed her win to "anti-incumbent energy" and volunteer canvassing.
DeGette has represented the Denver-based district since 1997; the Cook Political Report rates the 4th District solid Republican.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen said Democratic candidates "can be very clear about where they strongly disagree with the DSA, which is probably on most issues," while declining to criticize the group's primary winners. He said Democrats "who are afraid of a healthy debate are missing the point" and that left-leaning voters "want Democrats who are going to stand for something."
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said earlier this month on Meet the Press that he does not support the DSA agenda but that its nominees would join the party caucus if elected.
Elaine Kamarck, Riana Mahtani, and Gabriel Kraemer built a dataset of 282 DSA-chapter-endorsed candidates in the 2026 cycle and reported that more than half sought local or state legislative office, that statewide and congressional candidates won fewer than half of their primaries, and that only 10 DSA-backed candidates won in districts with a Cook PVI of less than D+10. The authors wrote that "from one perspective" the story of DSA candidates' influence "is overblown," given the scarcity of candidates and their success rates, while concluding that the high-profile wins "represent a warning to the rest of the party."
The dataset counts only candidates with a confirmed endorsement from an official DSA chapter — 29 of the 282 carried a national DSA endorsement — and was coded between July 9 and August 12, 2026.
Newsweek reported that August Siena polling found Mayor Zohran Mamdani viewed favorably by 69 percent of New York City voters but 34 percent favorable and 60 percent unfavorable in the downstate suburbs, with DSA favorability at 16 percent among suburban voters against 49 percent in the city. The piece attributed the gap in part to housing tenure — 32.8 percent owner-occupancy in the city versus 81.9 percent in Nassau County.
A November 2025 Siena poll put Mamdani at 55-31 percent favorable in New York City and 31-49 percent in the downstate suburbs.
In The American Prospect, David Duhalde, a democratic socialist organizer who has held positions in DSA and the DSA Fund, argued that DSA's membership of 120,000 reflects the death of civic society in the United States rather than the organization's limitations, and that the figure understates DSA's strength because DSA requires dues while peer organizations count free email sign-ups. He wrote that DSA "looks to be sending nearly half a dozen comrades to Congress next year."
The piece is a direct response to Harold Meyerson's August 10 Prospect essay "Why Have Less Than One Percent of American Socialists Joined DSA?"
In Jacobin, Ben Burgis argued that socialism's mainstream visibility — Mamdani's mayoralty, several DSA members likely headed to Congress, the Speaker of the House denouncing DSA's platform on the floor of Congress — means socialists are now addressing a general audience, and that the movement cannot take advantage of the opening without, in his words, "carefully calibrating our rhetoric and demands."
The piece follows DSA's release of a new national platform document, which the Speaker of the House denounced on the floor of Congress.
Axios reported that Nixon and Florida Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried had a call Friday that included a yelling match over socialism and campaigning in a red state, citing three people familiar with the conversation. Nixon told Fried she had not received sufficient help from the state party; a person who spoke with Nixon said Fried wants her "to back away from DSA, from socialism." Accounts of the call differ — two people who spoke with Nixon said both yelled, while a person who spoke to Fried said the chair did not yell but was yelled at.
The DSCC issued a statement supporting Nixon on primary night, in a joint release from Sen. Schumer and DSCC chair Gillibrand.
In a longform New York Times Magazine piece, Charles Homans reported on DSA's growth from fewer than 7,000 members in 2015 to the 120,000 announced in early July, and on the dispute between party moderates and socialists over the label's general-election viability. The piece cited a Gallup poll from last August finding 57 percent of people view socialism negatively and a July CNN poll finding a third of Democratic and Democratic-leaning adults identify as democratic socialists; moderates argued a national DSA candidacy would carry that negative label, while socialists countered that the label's general-election weakness is untested.
DSA co-chair Ashik Siddique announced the 120,000-member count in early July 2026.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he does not support the Democratic Socialists of America agenda "as has been articulated by the DSA itself." Asked by Kristen Welker whether democratic socialists belong in the Democratic Party, Jeffries said individual members elected in Democratic primaries would be part of the House Democratic caucus.
The remarks followed this month's Democratic Senate primary wins by Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota.
In Jacobin, Branko Marcetic argued that Francesca Hong's 0.5-point loss to David Crowley in Wisconsin's Democratic gubernatorial primary should not be read as a rejection of socialist candidates generally, noting that five of eight DSA-chapter-endorsed candidates in Wisconsin and Minnesota won their races the same night, four more advanced to the general unopposed, and five of seven DSA-backed candidates advanced in Connecticut and Vermont. Marcetic wrote that Wisconsin socialists have gone, in the space of a few years, from no state-legislature representation to two assembly members.
The piece links an August 12 Politico article as an example of coverage reading the result as a wholesale rejection of down-ballot socialists.