In the US midterm elections on November 3rd it is red against blue, Republicans against US Democrats. Donald Trump is more unpopular than ever. Polls point to a clear defeat for the Republicans, the president's party.
But behind the headlines, another significant development is taking place: Within the Democratic Party, an openly socialist movement is gaining influence and riding the predicted "Blue Wave." The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) does not run as a separate party; its candidates are almost always Democrats. They therefore appear blue on the voting map - and are therefore not immediately recognizable.
The DSA is not new: it was founded in 1982 with 6,000 members under the leadership of the journalist Michael Harrington. The DSA joined the Socialist International, the world association of social democratic and socialist parties then led by Willy Brandt; She left again in 2017. Since its founding, the organization has moved further to the left.
The SPD also uses the term “democratic socialism” in its program, but in terms of content the DSA is closer to the German Left Party and its demand for “system change”. The DSA writes that its vision goes “further than historical social democracy” and that it wants to “replace” capitalism.
The program calls for the largest corporations to be transferred to public ownership and for apartments to be strictly regulated as capital investments. In addition, the ICE immigration agency is to be disbanded, and the DSA wants to abolish police and prisons in the long term. Likewise in the DSA program: abolish the Senate, replace the President and the Supreme Court with bodies determined by Congress. Leading members go even further: Co-chair Megan Romer said in July on “Fox News” that the borders would be abolished in the long term and most large corporations would be put into public hands.
Until 2015, the DSA barely grew. Then came Bernie Sanders' first bid for the presidential nomination and Donald Trump's election victory. On election day 2016, the DSA had a maximum of 8,500 members; at the end of 2017 there were almost 30,000.
The boom was followed by internal struggles, especially over attitudes towards Israel. In 2021, when DSA Rep. Jamaal Bowman agreed to fund Israel's missile defense, dozens of local groups called for his exclusion. The following month, the DSA lost 5,500 paying members. By autumn 2024 their number fell from 79,000 to 50,000. After October 7, 2023, 24 prominent members of the old guard resigned. In 2025, the Assembly of Delegates declared “material support for Zionism” as a reason for exclusion.
Zohran Mamdani, now mayor of New York, brought the second boost: since autumn 2024, the number of paying members has almost doubled. How many there are today is unclear. The DSA homepage says "more than 100,000" members at the top and "more than 95,000" further down. In July the DSA reported 120,000, and an article in the members' magazine in October said 130,000.
The confusion lies in the structure. The DSA is organized decentrally and lacks a charismatic leader. Almost 200 often quarreling local groups hold power; the national DSA can only promote candidates that a local group already supports.
Votes in the House of Representatives show how much the DSA is affecting both major parties. In 2023, 109 Democrats voted for a Republican resolution against the “horrors of socialism,” and in November 2025, 86 voted, including their parliamentary group leader Hakeem Jeffries. In September 2026, Republicans condemned the DSA by name in a new resolution and at the same time called for a voting law with proof of citizenship. Eight Democrats agreed, Jeffries opposed. Since the summer, 60 moderate Democrats, including 10 members of Congress, have signed on to the phrase "We are capitalist, not socialist."
In October, Trump's economic advisers put the cost of the key DSA demands at $49 trillion over 10 years; the White House commented: "That is the policy of the Democrats." The Trump administration is trying to portray the Democrats as a party of socialists and extremists. The DSA serves as ammunition for her.
However, prominent Democrats are increasingly expecting the DSA to gain influence - and are open to the organization. California Governor Gavin Newsom, one of the Democrats' most influential "establishment" figures and possible presidential candidate, said on PBS in September that the DSA's ideas were already shaping the Democrats' program.
In mid-October, during a campaign appearance, a reporter from the conservative platform "Townhall", who was secretly filming, asked him in which direction the Democratic Party was developing. His answer: "The DSA, the energy, the desire and the demand for bold rather than gradual change - that will clearly dominate. That will be the mainstream movement of the Democrats. Absolutely. No question."
The fact that DSA candidates run as Democrats is due to the American electoral system. Parties there have no members in the German sense. If you want to run as a Democrat, you don't need a party ticket, you have to win a primary election.
In the two-party system, other parties often fail to even get on the ballot. That's why the DSA borrows the Democrats' label. Their candidates are “in the Democratic Party, but not for them,” the New York Times summarized the strategy.
On its home page, the DSA describes itself as “not a party”; the program states that the organization is “building a party.” Their decisions speak a different language. In 2023, the Assembly of Delegates, the highest decision-making body of the organization, passed a motion entitled “Act like an independent party.” It says that the key to defeating the far right and the Democratic Party is a third, democratic socialist alternative; The application cites, among others, the Left in Germany as a role model. The party under whose name DSA members are running is also considered an opponent.
The delegate meeting of 2025 set an “independent socialist mass party” as the goal. Their way there: the "party surrogate", i.e. acting like a party, even if without its own place on the ballot paper. We have to move away from running under the Democratic label; What is more important than having your own place on the ballot is carrying your own organization and your own program into the elections. Another resolution states that running under the Democratic label is the "most effective strategy for building a socialist party in the United States."
Officially, the DSA demands clarity. “We expect candidates to openly declare themselves to be socialists,” writes their national electoral commission; Leaflets, websites and social media should use the words “democratic socialist”. But in practice, some DSA candidates maneuver, especially in Republican-leaning areas. This can be seen in questionnaires that local groups use to assess their support for candidates.
Yisak Worku is running for state parliament in Texas. In his questionnaire, which the conservative website “Texas Scorecard” made public, he listed “Democrat and DSA” as his party affiliation; The DSA stands “ideologically for the future that I want for the Democratic Party.” When asked whether he would publicly describe himself as a democratic socialist during the election campaign, he wrote: "No, deep red district" (i.e. firmly in Republican hands). He told the Dallas Express: "I don't hide the fact that I'm DSA. Period."
Texas congressional candidate Chelsey Hockett, a DSA member, wrote to her local group in a questionnaire obtained by WELT that she would not run with the label “democratic socialist,” even though she is a socialist. On the other hand, she wants to closely integrate the DSA internally. She would like to include local group representatives in her campaign team and is “extremely open” to cooperation at all levels.
As an MP, she is open to joining the DSA program for socialist elected officials “to remain accountable.” Hockett wants to work "in two directions at once," including in the local Democratic Party, because that's where access to the ballot, voter contact and infrastructure lies. She is a member of her county's Democratic Party.
Florida Democratic Senate candidate Angie Nixon told "Democracy Now": "I'm not an active member of the DSA. I just paid a little dues." When asked by Politico whether she was a capitalist or a socialist, she replied: "I don't know." Whether the DSA should support Nixon was internally controversial in Florida; She is neither a socialist nor a DSA member, wrote a local group co-chair in an internal chat available to WELT.
At doorsteps in Detroit, a DSA activist campaigned for congressional candidate Donavan McKinney, but only mentioned the DSA "as a sort of side note for the curious," the New York Times reported. McKinney himself openly advertises: "This. Is. Socialism."
This interactive map shows what won't appear on hundreds of ballots on November 3rd. It places every DSA race at the federal and state levels over the usual red-blue electoral map. Click on the map. Then quotes, sources, forecasts and proximity to the DSA appear.
The map includes 163 candidates running for Congress, statewide offices and state legislatures in 36 states; In all of them, the national DSA, a local group or a member demonstrably plays a role. It does not show 80 municipal candidacies, for example for city councils, and 51 votes on political issues, in which the DSA is also involved. The map also contains 39 candidates who officially keep their distance, but are close to the DSA in terms of content and are networked with DSA members. This includes Abdul El-Sayed, Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan. His rival from the primary, Democrat Haley Stevens, narrowly lost to him there; on November 1, she threw her support behind Republican Mike Rogers.
The map is based on the DSA campaign page and the list of DSA election recommendations that the election platform Ballotpedia collects - supplemented by our own research on DSA members, election recommendations from local groups and candidates who are officially keeping their distance. Each candidacy is supported by sources and the data was checked by WELT. How the map was created is explained in detail in the section “How the map was created” below the map.
