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A wave of Democratic Socialists of America-aligned primary wins is forcing a question inside both parties ahead of November: does the progressive left's rise help Republicans more than it helps Democrats?
The party's leftward flank has notched a string of victories in 2026, from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's endorsed candidates sweeping congressional primaries in New York, to Melat Kiros unseating longtime Colorado Representative Diana DeGette, to Manny Rutinel winning the nomination in one of the party's top pickup targets. The DSA currently holds two seats in Congress. This cycle's wins alone are on track to roughly double that number, with more contested primaries still ahead.
Republicans have moved quickly to brand the trend as a liability for Democrats nationally. President Donald Trump called communism "the greatest threat to our country" since World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor or the September 11 attacks. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said communism is "on our own shores."
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Progressives have also won primaries this year in Kentucky, Texas and Maine, along with contested races in New Jersey and Philadelphia. Not every left-aligned candidate has prevailed. Progressive challengers lost in California, Maryland and Utah, and Colorado Senator John Hickenlooper turned back a primary challenge from state Senator Julie Gonzales. Whether the movement can replicate its urban successes in competitive general-election districts remains an open question among strategists in both parties.
Republicans See the 'Socialism' Label as a Midterm Weapon
Some strategists say the word choice matters more than the substance behind it.
"Not progressive, socialists," said Alex Patton, a Republican strategist and founder of Ozean Media. "Socialists and Socialism are much scarier words than progressive. The GOP excels at creating bogeymen to motivate its base, and Socialism, even though most can't define it, is a loaded word that carries significant weight."
Patton said the irony is that many of the underlying policies poll well when the label is removed.
"Socialist policies, when tested without the socialism tag, tend to poll fairly well, because of the economic turmoil and gross wealth inequities the public is seeing," Patton told Newsweek.
He said the risk for Democrats is in how the fight over that label gets resolved.
"It could be, if the Democrats allow the GOP to define them as the pinko-socialism-commie-unamerican party," Patton said of whether the dynamic could depress turnout or shift votes among independents and moderate Democrats. "The economy still plays the dominant factor, but the GOP will likely use it to ramp up base support as the threat to your way of life grows from the other side."
Matt Klink, a Republican consultant and president of Klink Campaigns, said the more significant shift is geographic. Democrats have long argued the DSA's reach is confined to dense, liberal cities.
"Democrats want voters to believe the DSA is a Los Angeles or a Brooklyn problem, confined to urban enclaves, harmless beyond big cities," Klink said. "The problem is that DSA-aligned candidates are now winning primaries in non-urban districts, which hands Republicans a ready-made argument that extends well beyond the coasts and straight into November."
The wins come at a moment of measurable strain on Americans' faith in the economic status quo, though not a full embrace of the alternative.
Positive views of capitalism fell to 54 percent in a Gallup survey conducted last August, the lowest reading since the firm began tracking the question in 2010 and down from 60 percent in 2021. Views of socialism, by contrast, have barely moved in 15 years, with 39 percent of Americans viewing it positively and 57 percent negatively.
Klink said the economy remains the top issue heading into the midterms but argued the socialist label complicates how voters process it.
"The economy, as the top issue for November 2026, sets the table, but the socialist brand poisons the food," Klink said. "Independent voters who might overlook high prices won't give their trust to a political party that looks like it's being run by its most radical wing. When those two forces combine, you don't get depressed turnout, you get Republicans winning seats they otherwise wouldn't."
But to skeptics inside the Democratic Party, those numbers describe a ceiling, not a launchpad. Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at the center-left think tank Third Way, said the bigger electoral question is not persuasion but turnout. Midterms, he said, are typically shaped by which side is more motivated to show up when the president is not on the ballot.
"When extremists win the nomination, it juices turnout on the other end of the ideological spectrum as voters feel their values threatened," Kessler said. He pointed to Mamdani's mayoral win as evidence of that pattern. Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist, drew more votes than any winning candidate for New York City mayor in the city's history. He was also opposed by more voters than any elected mayor in the city's history, Kessler said, despite running against a scandal-plagued Andrew Cuomo.
Kessler said Republicans are heading into a difficult political environment on the merits. Trump's approval rating is low, and voters remain unsatisfied with the economy, the war with Iran, inflation and tariffs, he said. If the midterms turn purely into a referendum on Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress, Kessler said, Democrats would be positioned to easily retake the House and gain ground in the Senate.
"So Republicans have to make this a choice between Republicans and an extremist Democratic Party. That is the only bet they can make," Kessler said. He cited Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner as an example of Democrats nominating candidates who carry political baggage into swing contests. "For midterm voters, this could be an election where they are forced to pick their poison."
Why Progressives Say the 'Red Scare' Attack Won't Work in 2026
Not every voice on the left agrees that the socialist label is politically damaging. Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of the progressive group Our Revolution, said attempts to scare voters off the socialist brand are losing their power with an electorate shaped by economic hardship rather than Cold War-era fears.
"Red Scare tactics only work on people who haven't lived through what unchecked corporate power actually does," Geevarghese said. "This generation has. They're not falling in love with an ideology. They're done with a government that answers to corporations instead of to them."
Geevarghese said Democratic-aligned candidates from the progressive wing are winning less because of ideological branding and more because of how they campaign, pointing to Claire Valdez, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Chris Rabb as examples of candidates embedded in door-to-door organizing rather than reliant on institutional donors and name recognition.
He also pushed back on the idea that Republicans and the party's own establishment could neutralize progressive momentum by attacking it. "Republicans have run this attack for a century. What's new and notable is the Democratic establishment trying to borrow the same tactic now, and finding it doesn't work either," he said.
Doug Gordon, a Democratic strategist and co-founder of UpShift Strategies, said progressives are winning because they are matching the mood of the electorate rather than despite it. "Progressives are winning because they are meeting voters where voters are at," Gordon told Newsweek. "Voters are sick of a system where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer because of a rigged system. Progressives are fighting against the status quo and matching voters' anger."
Recent polling suggests voters are not uniformly more alarmed by the Democratic Party's left flank than by Republicans. A late June Economist/YouGov poll found more independents describe the Republican Party as too extreme than say the same of the Democratic Party. A separate survey from the Pew Research Center found most Americans do not favor politicians who identify as democratic socialists, though the label draws strong support among younger and more liberal voters who tend to turn out reliably in primaries.
Patton argued the trend reflects a broader political dynamic that predates this year's primary contests.
"The most ironic thing about all of this is socialism is rising as a response to MAGA," Patton said. "Without MAGA, there is little to no possibility a self-described socialist wins elections."
But Kessler said that even if MAGA has helped fuel the rise of socialist candidates, Democrats still face political risks when those candidates become nominees in competitive races. He argued the party has compounded those challenges by fielding candidates with vulnerabilities beyond ideology, giving Republicans additional lines of attack.
"Democratic Socialists want to nominate one of their own in the 2028 presidential primary. I’d put their odds somewhere between slim and none. But if they manage to pull it off, Republicans will romp to victory," he said.
How the Democratic Socialist Bloc in Congress Has Grown
The current fight traces back to a small but growing footprint on Capitol Hill. New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib are the Democratic Socialists of America's only sitting members of Congress, a number the group's leaders expect to reach five once Valdez, Avila Chevalier and Rabb are sworn in next year.
That would top the bloc's modern high-water mark. Four organization-affiliated members served together in 2021, when Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib were joined by Missouri Representative Cori Bush and New York Representative Jamaal Bowman. Both Bush and Bowman lost their seats in 2024, cutting the number back to two.
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Yet, the model does not travel everywhere.
In San Francisco, Saikat Chakrabarti, a millionaire and former chief of staff to Ocasio-Cortez whose supporters likened him to Mamdani, finished a distant third in the June 2 primary for retiring Representative Nancy Pelosi's seat, drawing about 15 percent despite spending millions of his own money. He was not endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, but his loss in one of the country's most liberal cities showed that the insurgent left's New York playbook does not guarantee wins elsewhere.
In Florida, even if Larkin wins his August primary, the district that Republicans redrew this year leaves him a hard general election.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jenni Fink and Gray R. Thomas
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