I have written about this trend for years and was attacked whenever I pointed out that the Democratic Party was gradually abandoning its traditional economic foundation and moving openly toward socialism. They no longer have to hide it. The voters themselves are now saying it.
A new CBS News/YouGov poll found that 58% of Democrats have a positive view of socialism while only 32% have a positive view of capitalism. Among college-educated Democrats, support for socialism rises to an astonishing 71%. This is no longer Bernie Sanders standing on the fringe screaming about millionaires and billionaires. Socialism has become more popular than capitalism within the Democratic Party itself.
This did not suddenly happen in 2026. Gallup found all the way back in 2010 that 53% of Democrats viewed socialism positively. By 2018, that figure stood at 57%, while positive attitudes toward capitalism among Democrats had fallen to 47%. Gallup specifically noted at that time that Democrats had become more positive about socialism than capitalism. By 2021, 65% of Democrats viewed socialism favorably compared with 52% for capitalism.
Then came another major deterioration. Gallup reported in 2025 that only 42% of Democrats still viewed capitalism positively while 66% viewed socialism favorably. The latest CBS poll is asking the questions somewhat differently and should not be treated as a directly comparable time series, but the direction is unmistakable. The Democratic base has spent well over a decade becoming increasingly comfortable with the word SOCIALISM while its confidence in capitalism has collapsed.
The politicians did not create this out of thin air. Washington destroyed confidence in capitalism because what we have today is increasingly not free-market capitalism at all. Government picks winners and losers. The banks are bailed out. Corporations receive subsidies. Congress writes tax codes nobody can understand. The Federal Reserve manipulates interest rates. Young people cannot afford homes. College students graduate buried in debt. Healthcare costs have exploded. Then politicians tell a 25-year-old who cannot afford an apartment that this is “capitalism.”
The younger generations were never taught what socialism actually produced throughout history. They were taught that socialism means free healthcare, free education, affordable housing and making billionaires pay more taxes. Democrats increasingly associate socialism with government services and equality rather than government ownership of production.
That distinction is important because when Americans say they support “socialism,” many are not demanding that Washington nationalize every factory tomorrow morning. They are responding to an economic system they believe no longer gives them a reasonable opportunity to advance. The politicians exploit that frustration by promising that government can provide whatever the private economy supposedly failed to deliver.
Housing is unaffordable partly because governments restrict supply, regulate construction, inflate asset prices and manipulate credit. Higher education became outrageously expensive after government guarantees helped disconnect tuition from market discipline. Healthcare is buried beneath government mandates, subsidies, licensing restrictions and an incomprehensible combination of public and private bureaucracy. Then the political solution is always MORE GOVERNMENT.
This is how republics move toward socialism. It does not begin with tanks rolling through Washington and somebody announcing the abolition of private property. It begins with each generation surrendering another piece of economic freedom because government promises security in return.
Look at what is happening politically. The Democratic Socialists of America has grown from roughly 5,000 members around 2011 to nearly 130,000 today. Socialist and socialist-aligned candidates are no longer curiosities confined to a handful of university districts. They are winning Democratic primaries and forcing establishment Democrats to respond. The centrist Democratic organization Third Way has become so alarmed that it is launching a $15 million effort to counter the socialist wing of its own party.
You do not spend $15 million fighting something that does not exist. The socialist movement understands the economic frustration of younger Americans far better than the establishment does. They look at people paying enormous rents, delaying marriage, unable to purchase homes, carrying student debt and watching food, insurance and electricity consume larger portions of their income. Then they say capitalism failed you and government will fix it.
Yet the broader American public has not crossed that bridge. The new poll still finds capitalism viewed positively by 46% of Americans compared with 35% for socialism. That is an important distinction. This is presently a transformation taking place primarily inside the Democratic coalition, not evidence that the United States as a whole has become socialist.
What should concern everyone is where this goes during the next economic downturn. Political systems become vulnerable when living standards decline. People do not embrace radical political change when everything is working. They turn toward it when the existing establishment has lost credibility and neither side offers a believable path back to prosperity.
The Democrats used to deny they were becoming socialist. Then they called it democratic socialism. Now a clear majority of Democratic voters openly tell pollsters they view socialism favorably while barely one-third say the same about capitalism. At some point, you have to believe what people are telling you.
The greater tragedy is that Washington created the conditions that made the entrepreneurial spirit of capitalism seem bleak and unattainable. Socialism is not rising because it suddenly discovered some brilliant new economic theory. It is rising because government destroyed confidence in what came before it.