(CNN) — The rise of democratic socialists in recent House primaries is certainly posing problems for the Democratic Party.
But as Republicans seek to make this a central issue in the 2026 midterm elections, new data indicates it might not be as big a liability for Democrats as one might think.
A case in point: A new poll suggests that a democratic socialist candidate is actually less of a liability than being a MAGA supporter or being endorsed by President Donald Trump.
The new CNBC poll got at this question in an interesting way. It asked registered voters whether they would be more or less likely to vote for candidates with various associations.
While 50% of voters said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who describes themselves as a democratic socialist, just 32% said they would be more likely. That’s not too good.
Then we get to the “but.”
The numbers were slightly worse for a generic candidate endorsed by Trump. Registered voters said they were less likely to support that candidate, 52%-29%.
And the numbers were significantly worse for a candidate who described themselves as a supporter of the MAGA movement. In that case, the margin was 57%-27%.
Perhaps even more important than those overall numbers, the Trump-endorsed and MAGA options also engendered more passionate opposition than a democratic socialist did. (That doesn’t bode well for the GOP’s strategy since the idea is generally to scare would-be voters away from democratic socialist candidates.) So, while 42% said they were “much less likely” to back a democratic socialist, that number was 46% for a Trump-endorsed candidate and 50% for a MAGA candidate.
The poll also suggested registered voters might becoming more okay with at least a little bit of socialism.
While 44% of voters said “some form of socialism” would be bad for the country, 51% of Americans said so in a 2019 Gallup survey.
And another 40% of registered voters said some form of socialism was a “good thing.” (The US government already has forms of socialism like social safety net programs. And Trump has pursued some socialistic policies like having the federal government take ownership stakes in various businesses.)
Somewhat similarly, the Pew Research Center in a recently released survey found a declining percentage of Americans said they disliked political leaders who identified as democratic socialists.
The poll, which was conducted in January, showed 38% said they disliked such leaders. That was down from the mid-40s in 2021 and 2022. And the percentage who said they disliked such leaders “a lot” was 28% — down from 34% earlier this decade.
To the extent the percentage of respondents who strongly object to democratic socialists is between 28% (from the Pew poll) and 42% (from the CNBC poll), that might help Republicans motivate some GOP base voters who feel strongly about the subject. And that’s politically valuable, especially in a midterm year in which Democratic voters appear significantly more enthusiastic than Republican ones. One of the most valuable things in politics is an effective boogeyman.
But democratic socialism doesn’t seem to be an issue that alienates even close to half the electorate. In other words, it doesn’t seem likely to sway swing voters as much as it did before.
So Republicans might want to start worrying that MAGA appears to be an even bigger boogeyman than the big boogeyman they were counting on.
The-CNN-Wire
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