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By Khaleda Rahman
National Correspondent
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Democratic socialists have emerged as some of the biggest winners of the midterm elections, with a new group heading to Congress after a string of decisive victories on Tuesday.
Only a handful of candidates running in prominent races this year are members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) or identified themselves as democratic socialists.
They notched a series of victories in congressional primaries this year, after the rise of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, who spurred the DSA's growth following his election as New York City's mayor last year.
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Most of the victories came in safely Democratic territory, after some of the candidates toppled establishment Democrats in hotly contested primary campaigns, setting up a test of how the left's candidates would perform in a general election.
In a historic night for the DSA, eight candidates who are either members of the organization or backed by it won their races, with preliminary results showing some have significantly outperformed the margins Democrats recorded in their districts in 2024. Representatives Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, the only two sitting lawmakers who are members of the DSA, also won reelection—meaning the number of DSA members in Congress will more than triple when the legislative body is seated in January.
As well as increasing the number of DSA lawmakers on Capitol Hill, the coalition could have outsize influence if Democrats win back the House with a thin majority and seek policy wins that push the Democratic Party further to the left.
"One thing is already clear, this will be an issue for 2028," Grant Davis Reeher, a professor of political science at Syracuse University, told Newsweek.
"That wing of the party will have to be given a meaningful seat at the table for determining national strategy, and given the presidential primary system, those voters will be a factor in the nomination process," he added.
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Darializa Avila Chevalier
Chevalier won the race to represent New York's 13th Congressional District. With 92 percent of the votes counted, she had 87.5 percent of the vote while Republican Jomo M. Williams had 11.4 percent.
That 70-point margin is larger than the 66-point margin of victory that five-term Representative Adriano Espaillat—who lost to Chevalier in the primary—secured in the district in 2024.
Chevalier, a political newcomer who once helped organize pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, made opposition to Israel's military campaign in Gaza a cornerstone of her campaign.
Donavan McKinney
McKinney, who overcame a huge spending disadvantage to unseat Representative Shri Thanedar in the Democratic primary, won the race in Michigan's 13th Congressional District.
The Associated Press called the race at 3:33 a.m. on Wednesday. With 64 percent of the votes counted, McKinney had 75.6 percent of the vote compared to Republican T.P. Nykoriak's 20.7 percent.
His current margin of victory is 54.9 percentage points. Thanedar won the district with a margin of 44.1 points in 2024.
Claire Valdez
Valdez, a state lawmaker, won New York's heavily Democratic 7th Congressional District after defeating Republican Melvin Rivera.
Endorsed by Mamdani, she beat the handpicked successor to retiring Representative Nydia Velazquez in the Democratic primary.
Preliminary results show that with 85 percent of the votes counted, Valdez's margin of victory was about 68 points, with 83.3 percent of the vote to Rivera's 15 percent. Velazquez won the district by about 56 points in 2024.
Melat Kiros
Kiros, a lawyer turned doctoral student, defeated Republican Christy Peterson in Colorado's 1st Congressional District.
With 69 percent of the votes counted, Kiros had 78.3 percent of the vote to Peterson's 13.9 percent, a margin of 64.4 points.
Representative Diana DeGette, the 30-year incumbent Kiros unseated in a stunning primary victory, won the district by a margin of 54.9 points in 2024.
Chris Rabb
Rabb, a Pennsylvania state lawmaker, easily won the race in Pennsylvania's deep blue 3rd Congressional District.
With 97 percent of the votes counted, he had 93.6 percent of the vote, while independent Dennis Mahoney garnered 6.4 percent.
A comparison with the Democratic performance in 2024 is difficult, however, since retiring Democratic incumbent Dwight Evans faced no named challenger in 2024. Evans won the district with 99.2 percent of the vote that year, with about 0.8 percent of the votes cast as write-ins.
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Rashida Tlaib
Tlaib, one of the democratic socialists already in Congress, comfortably secured another term representing Michigan's 12th Congressional District.
With 92 percent of the votes counted, she had 75.4 percent of the vote, compared to Republican James Hooper's 21.8 percent, giving her a margin of 53.6 points.
If those numbers hold, Tlaib has performed better than she did in 2024, when she won by 44.3 points.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Ocasio-Cortez, one of the country's most prominent democratic socialists, comfortably won a fifth term representing New York's 14th Congressional District on Tuesday.
With about 96 percent of the votes counted, Ocasio-Cortez had 78.2 percent of the vote compared to Republican Diamant Hysenaj's 21.5 percent, a margin of 56.7 points.
Ocasio-Cortez, who has been floated as a 2028 presidential hopeful, improved on her performance in 2024, when she defeated Republican Tina Forte by a margin of 38.4 points.
Angela Gonzales-Torres
Gonzales-Torres' race against five-term Democratic Representative Jimmy Gomez in California's 34th Congressional District was too close to call early on Wednesday.
But with 66 percent of the votes counted, she was leading Gomez, with 57.8 percent to his 42.2 percent.
A comparison to the 2024 results in the district is complicated since the boundaries changed after California voters approved a new House map last year. Gomez defeated fellow Democrat David Kim by about 11.2 points in the district in 2024.
Angie Nixon
In Florida, Republican Senator Ashley Moody defeated democratic socialist Angie Nixon in the special election for Secretary of State Marco Rubio's Senate seat.
Although Moody won the race to serve the final two years of the term Rubio won in 2022, her margin of victory gives Democrats a boost in a state that has been reliably Republican in recent years. President Donald Trump carried Florida by 13 points in 2024, and Democrats have not won a Senate race there since 2012.
With 99 percent of the votes counted, Moody had 50.9 percent of the vote, while Nixon had 48 percent, a margin of 2.9 points.
In 2022, Rubio won reelection to the Senate against Democrat Val Demings by a margin of 16.4 points.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: John Fitzpatrick and Shakeema Edwards.
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