What the Polls Are Screaming to 'Mainstream' Democrats [View all]

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2025-09-09-what-polls-are-screaming-mainstream-democrats/



Lately, the gap between what rank-and-file Democrats believe and what many leading Democratic officials say and do has widened to Grand Canyon dimensions. I’ve noted previously that while just a bare 8 percent of Democrats supported Israel’s war on Gaza in a July Gallup poll, a substantial minority of Democratic senators voted against a Bernie Sanders resolution in August to halt our nation’s provision of offensive arms to Israel.

Now, two new polls reveal the core ideological beliefs of Democrats and those of their top leaders are similarly dissimilar. A New York Times/Siena poll released today shows that democratic socialist and Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani leads Andrew Cuomo in New York’s mayoral race by a 46 percent to 24 percent margin, with Republican Curtis Sliwa and incumbent Eric Adams bringing up the rear.

On a more fundamental, what-do-you-believe, who-are-you level, a Gallup poll yesterday shows that nationally, the percentage of Democrats who view socialism positively—66 percent—exceeds the percentage who view capitalism positively—42 percent—by (using my powers of subtraction) a 24 percentage point margin. At a less theoretical level where the rubber meets the road, the Times/Siena poll of New Yorkers showed that 37 percent of them (not just the Democrats) said having a democratic socialist for their mayor would be good for the city, against 32 percent who said it would be bad and 26 percent who said it would be neither good nor bad. As well, the specifics of Mamdani’s “affordability” agenda’s social democratic policies polled considerably higher than his opponents’ stances.

Let’s back up a bit. From the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt through that of Lyndon Johnson, the prevailing ideology of the Democratic Party was a weak-tea version of social democracy. The Carter and Clinton presidencies marked a clear switch to neoliberalism, from which the Obama presidency never really shook itself free. Today, in a period when wage income lags hugely behind investment income and when income inequality, consequently, continues to soar, it shouldn’t be all that surprising that a substantial majority of Democrats react more positively to democratic socialism than they do to actually existing capitalism.

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