(CNN) — The political season some have christened as “hot DSA summer” is lurching to an awfully eventful close.
Just a week after a momentous but surprisingly tight primary victory for Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (who doesn’t actually identify as a democratic socialist but shares the movement’s sensibilities), democratic socialist Francesca Hong narrowly lost in the Wisconsin governor’s primary Tuesday in a bit of a shocker.
The latter result is being greeted with a sigh of relief from the Democratic establishment, which feared Hong torpedoing their chances in an important state.
But that doesn’t mean the party is out of the woods or that this dynamic is going anywhere.
The totality of the results this summer suggests democratic socialists remain ascendant and could still cause the party problems as it seeks to flip the House and Senate this year. But Democratic voters have shown an ability to recognize and respond to that potential danger.
Let’s recap what we’ve learned.
Democratic socialists are clearly ascendant. But they’re still a small piece.
It’s possible to oversell just how ascendant and significant this wing of the party is. But it’s clearly gaining steam.
A year after Zohran Mamdani’s big win in the New York City mayor’s race, we’ve seen:
- Democratic socialists defeat three incumbent House members – in New York, Colorado and last week in Michigan.
- They also won a handful of other primaries, meaning the DSA contingent in the next Congress, while still in the single digits, will likely be bigger than ever.
- They’re on course to add Washington, DC, and possibly Los Angeles to their mayorships in New York City and Seattle.
- El-Sayed’s nomination and former DSA member William Lawrence’s primary win in Michigan’s battleground 7th Congressional District give this wing of the Democratic Party a rare proving ground outside of deep-blue urban areas.
Oh, and don’t forget that some democratic socialist lawmakers appear to be among the party’s bright shining stars. Mamdani’s stock is pretty high right now, Bernie Sanders remains quite popular nationally, and everyone is waiting for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s next big political move – whether that be running for Senate or even for president.
Democratic voters showed they’re still pragmatic
Plenty of people have asked why El-Sayed and Hong – both of whom were considered favorites in their primaries – wound up in nail-biters.
One likely contributing factor: Democratic voters are more pragmatic and strategic than people give them credit for. It’s quite possible that the national party’s worries about nominating El-Sayed and Hong registered with voters late in the race.
There would seem to be a reason, after all, that the party hasn’t previously nominated candidates like El-Sayed in swing races.
Republicans have nominated a bunch of extreme and problematic Senate and gubernatorial candidates that cost them in recent years – think: Doug Mastriano, Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, Sharron Angle, Mark Robinson – but Democrats really haven’t had those kinds of problems.
In fact, they seemed to balk at Elizabeth Warren early in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries after polling showed her performing worse against President Donald Trump than other Democrats.
The tightness of the race in Wisconsin, meanwhile, suggested that supporters of non-Hong candidates coalesced behind the more-moderate Milwaukee County executive David Crowley at the very end.
So maybe these kinds of candidates have a better chance today than they used to, but Democratic voters still value electability.
There is still danger in this trend for Democrats
Just because Hong lost doesn’t mean the danger is behind Democrats. She might have been a more problematic nominee than El-Sayed, but we still don’t know how a candidate like El-Sayed will play in a battleground state.
And voters could start out skeptical.
A recent poll shows Americans viewed DSA unfavorably by a 36%-18% margin. Another showed just 38% of Americans preferred more socialism. And yet another showed 50% of voters said they would be less likely to vote for a self-described democratic socialist, while just 32% would be more likely.
Again, El-Sayed doesn’t label himself a democratic socialist. But he’s left-wing enough that these numbers are instructive.
How he performs in November will say a lot about how comfortable Democratic voters will be with nominating candidates like him in competitive races moving forward.
If he wins, it’s a big moment for the left. If he loses, it could be an even bigger setback for the movement – and cost Democrats the Senate majority.
(Indeed, some on the far-left appeared wary of nominating Hong for fear of how her performance might ultimately reflect on them. Very few high-profile left-wingers publicly supported her.)
Left-wing voters are mobilized, but so are other Democrats
Regardless of who won Tuesday, it shouldn’t escape notice that nearly 800,000 voters participated in the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary.
That’s about 100,000 more than turned out for the GOP gubernatorial primary in 2022, and it’s about 250,000 more than turned out for the last competitive Democratic gubernatorial primary, in 2018.
The 310,000-plus votes that Hong got was a lot for a democratic socialist candidate; indeed, it would have won pretty much any competitive primary for that office. But the current political environment is also turning out huge numbers of more mainstream Democratic voters.
And it’s not just Wisconsin. A CNN analysis last month showed Democratic primary turnout surging far beyond the last two midterms and far surpassing GOP turnout. Minnesota just set a primary turnout record, and it was overwhelmingly on the Democratic side – with about 700,000 votes in that primary, compared to about 400,000 on the GOP side, even as both featured competitive contests.
The key for Democrats now is in keeping both sides of the party mobilized, even if there might be hard feelings about who made it to the general election.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.