The numbers landed on a spreadsheet in July. Two hundred eighty-two candidates. Ninety-nine running for local office. One hundred four for state legislatures. Only twenty-nine carried the national DSA stamp.
Elaine Kamarck and her team at Brookings started coding on July 9. They finished August 12. The primary season was still breathing in September but the picture had hardened.
Zohran Mamdani took New York City hall in November 2025. That was the breakthrough. Then came the 2026 primaries. Abdul El-Sayed won the Michigan Senate nomination. He calls himself a capitalist. He was never a DSA member. The national organization never endorsed him. Francesca Hong came close in the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary.
In New York’s 13th Congressional District, Darializa Avila Chevalier unseated Adriano Espaillat. She later scrubbed her social media of posts praising communism and Marxism. “I have grown considerably in the years since these tweets, and I am focused on our community and our community’s future,” she said.
El-Sayed, for his part, emphasizes that he is not a DSA member, that he is not a socialist, and that he can build a big tent for the Democrats.
Brookings found ninety candidates from California. Twenty-one from New York. The largest clusters sat in districts rated D+10 or deeper. Even there, DSA-backed candidates lost more primaries than they won.
Only ten prevailed in districts with a Cook PVI under D+10.
For statewide and congressional races, the win rate stayed under half.
Democratic centrists read the numbers with alarm. Control of the House and Senate is in reach, they say, because of the economy and President Donald Trump’s low approval ratings. But nominating candidates out of step with mainstream voters could cost the chamber. Erin Covey at the Cook Political Report found that in the House seats most likely to flip, Democratic primary voters chose more moderate candidates.
Conservatives outnumbered liberals by 3 to 2 in 2024, just as they outnumbered liberals by 3 to 2 from 2004 to 2024, according to Jim Kessler of Third Way.
The high-profile wins were fueled by young, white, educated voters. They signal unhappiness with the Democratic establishment and, in the post-Biden world, opposition to elderly officeholders.
Rep. John Larson, 78, lost his primary in Connecticut. The race centered on his age, not ideology.
Trump and the Republicans will not let the radical statements go. No matter how many times candidates scrub their accounts or disavow their past.
Come November, the test arrives.
