A CBS News/YouGov poll of 2,287 adults, conducted August 12-14, found that 58% of Democrats hold a positive view of socialism. Only 32% view capitalism positively. That's a 26-point gap — not between Democrats and Republicans, but between Democrats and the economic system that built the country they're trying to run.
Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, had one word for it: "lunacy."
The numbers get worse the deeper you go. Fifty percent of Democrats hold a negative view of capitalism outright. Only 18% say the same about socialism. And 24% of Democrats couldn't even muster an opinion on socialism one way or the other — which, given what socialism has done to every country that's tried it, suggests the education system is working exactly as designed.
A separate Economist/YouGov poll from August 7-10 found that 62% of Democrats said they would vote for a candidate who identified as a "Democratic Socialist." Only 11% said they wouldn't.
Overall — across all party affiliations — 35% of respondents viewed socialism positively while 46% viewed capitalism the same way. So the country as a whole still picks the system that produces groceries, electricity, and iPhones. But the gap inside the Democratic Party has flipped so completely that their own elected officials are calling it out.
The Economist/YouGov survey from June, polling 1,606 respondents, found that only 26% of all respondents believed most Democrats are socialists, while 42% said they didn't believe that. The party still has plausible deniability with the broader electorate — for now. But 58% of your own voters just told a pollster they prefer the system, and 62% said they'd vote for the candidate. At some point the label catches up to the numbers.
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, is the current face of that trajectory. The party's rising stars aren't running from the word. They're running on it. And the base, according to every available data point, is cheering.