Democratic Socialists Are Counting on the Fog
A new Napolitan survey finds 44% of voters call Democratic Socialists a threat to America’s founding ideals. Fewer than half can say what one is.
Forty-four percent of registered voters say Democratic Socialists are a threat to America’s founding ideals of freedom, equality, and self-governance. Thirty-five percent say they are not. Twenty-one percent are not sure. And fewer than half of the electorate, 47%, claim to know what a Democratic Socialist is.
A new Napolitan News Service survey of 1,000 registered voters, conducted August 10–11, 2026, by Scott Rasmussen and RMG Research, arrives after a run of primary victories by candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America. The wins have the political class treating the label as a movement. Voters have not yet settled on what the label means.
Start with the 47% who say they know. Asked to describe a Democratic Socialist in a few words, 20% of them answered “progressive.” Another 17% defined the term by repeating it. Seventeen percent offered “economic democracy,” 14% said “social welfare,” and 7% mentioned wealth redistribution. Put the question to the full sample and ask only about direction: 57% understand that Democratic Socialists want more government control of the economy and society, 21% believe they want less, and 22% cannot say. A fifth of the electorate has the compass pointed backwards.
The fog is the brand’s chief asset. Michael Harrington founded the DSA in 1982 to operate inside the Democratic Party rather than against it, and the first word of the name was the bridge. The word invites a voter to hear “Democrat with conviction” where the program means something else. Napolitan tested that program in July, after DSA co-chair Megan Romer restated it: abolish the Senate, end all deportations, lift all restrictions on entry into the United States. Voters rejected eliminating the Senate by 70% to 19%. Sixty-seven percent opposed open entry. Fifty-nine percent opposed ending deportations, including a majority of Democrats. The label polls better than any plank beneath it, and the movement knows it.
The partisan split in the new survey runs where expected. Seventy-one percent of Republicans call Democratic Socialists a threat to the founding ideals, while 61% of Democrats say they are not. The more revealing number sits in the employment breakdown. Government employees are the only measured occupational group that says Democratic Socialists pose no threat, by 56% to 26%. Obviously, the people who administer the state are the people least worried about a program to enlarge it.
Rasmussen has argued for months that every DSA primary win is a gift to the Republican Party. The August numbers support the claim and attach a condition. A plurality of voters reached the verdict of “threat” while half the country could not define the defendant. Since 57% already understand which way the program runs, the remaining work for its opponents is to close the gap between the word and the thing.
