Mamdani’s victory last year gave the DSA one of its biggest governing footholds yet and accelerated the expansion of progressive political infrastructure into congressional, state, and local races nationwide.

The DSA’s own election tracker underscores that growth. According to figures published by the organization, “Team DSA” candidates were involved in 133 races this cycle, with 14 wins already secured, 91 candidates still running, and 27 losses recorded so far.

“They’re not a fringe group anymore,” said Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and longtime Democratic analyst. “Their influence is far more than people would have guessed it would be just several years ago.”

The organization’s rise, which accelerated after Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) presidential campaigns and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) upset 2018 victory over longtime incumbent Joe Crowley, has transformed it from a protest movement into a growing political apparatus with elected officials, campaign staffers, donor networks, and grassroots infrastructure operating inside Democratic politics nationwide.

In Pennsylvania, state Rep. Chris Rabb won the Democratic primary in the state’s 3rd Congressional District and is now poised to become the DSA’s second nationally endorsed member of Congress if he wins the general election in the heavily Democratic district. In California, Los Angeles City Council members Eunisses Hernandez and Hugo Soto-Martinez secured reelection victories, while Dot Reid won a seat on the Los Angeles Unified School District board.

Other DSA-backed or DSA-aligned candidates who advanced or claimed victories in state and local races this year included candidates in Georgia, Oregon, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina, and Vermont, reflecting the organization’s continued focus on building influence beyond Congress and into municipal, legislative, and education races.

The broader movement has also expanded into battleground and red-leaning territory. Randy Villegas, a progressive candidate backed by Sanders, advanced in California’s 22nd Congressional District, a Central Valley swing seat represented by Rep. David Valadao (R-CA). In New York, progressive infrastructure tied to Mamdani and the city’s DSA network has increasingly expanded into congressional and downballot contests. Organizers and operatives connected to Mamdani’s political orbit and DSA organizing circles have also played roles in recent progressive campaigns, including that of Maine Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner, reflecting what supporters and critics alike describe as a growing institutional infrastructure on the Democratic Left.

The DSA did not respond to a request for comment.

Matt McDermott, a Democratic pollster and senior vice president at Whitman Insight Strategies, argued that many voters are less motivated by ideology than by frustration with the political establishment and economic anxiety.

“The strongest signal from Democratic voters right now frankly isn’t ideological, it’s entirely performance-based,” McDermott said. “We’re seeing an electorate that’s saying, ‘Show me you can improve my life. Show me you can get things done.’”

Rather than embracing socialism itself, McDermott argued that many voters are rewarding candidates they see as outsiders focused on affordability, housing costs, and broader economic frustration.

“I think it’s a mistake to read every one of these victories as evidence that the Democratic Party is moving in an ideological direction,” he said. “A lot of what we’re seeing is voters rewarding candidates who they view as fighters.”

That anti-establishment energy has increasingly fueled progressive political networks in cities such as Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and New York, where DSA-aligned organizers have expanded beyond activism into staffing, consulting, and candidate development.

“I definitely think there’s a pipelining effect here,” McDermott said. “Voters aren’t thinking about things primarily through an ideological lens. They’re thinking about effectiveness. They’re thinking about frustration with the status quo.”

Democratic strategist Jon Reinish said the growing influence of DSA-aligned candidates reflects a broader vacuum inside Democratic politics after the party’s losses in 2024, with voters gravitating toward candidates they perceive as authentic and anti-establishment.

“There’s clearly an appetite among parts of the Democratic electorate for candidates who are willing to challenge the status quo,” Reinish said. “But the larger question for Democrats is whether that energy can translate outside heavily blue urban areas and into the kinds of districts that decide congressional majorities and presidential elections.”

Balancing act with moderates

Reinish argued Democrats still face a balancing act between energizing progressive activists and rebuilding credibility with moderates, independents, and working-class voters who drifted away from the party in recent election cycles.

“The challenge isn’t just winning primaries,” he said. “The challenge is building a coalition broad enough to win nationally.”

Reinish is not alone in warning that Democrats could struggle to translate progressive energy into broader national victories.

Teixeira described the DSA as “the vanguard of the left-wing educated activist element within the Democratic Party,” arguing its rise reflects Democrats’ broader shift away from working-class voters and toward highly educated progressive activists.

“The DSA is a movement of radical educated professionals,” Teixeira said. “It’s not really of the working class at all.”

While supporters argue DSA candidates are reconnecting Democrats with economically frustrated voters, Teixeira said many working-class voters remain alienated by the movement’s broader politics.

“If you were going to have a prescription after the 2024 election for how Democrats could get back in the good graces of working-class voters, you wouldn’t have said, ‘What they really need is increased influence of the DSA,’” he said.

Still, Teixeira argued that anti-establishment politics have increasingly benefited DSA-aligned candidates inside Democratic primaries, pointing to Platner’s campaign as one example.

“There’s a real anti-establishment mood in the country,” he said. “There’s a lot of mileage you can get as a Democrat by railing against the establishment.”

Even so, Teixeira acknowledged that the movement’s success has been fueled not just by ideology but by organization and manpower.

“They have foot soldiers,” he said. “They can intervene in electoral contests, they can elect some of their own members or affiliates, they can provide troops for politicians who are sympathetic to their politics.”

The growing influence of DSA-aligned candidates has also intensified anxiety among centrist Democratic groups attempting to rebuild the party’s standing with moderate and swing voters after President Donald Trump’s 2024 victory.

Kate deGruyter, vice president of communications at Third Way, warned that Democrats risk serious electoral consequences if the party becomes too closely identified with the DSA.

“If the Democratic brand becomes synonymous with democratic socialism, that is dangerous for Democratic majorities,” deGruyter said.

She argued that social media and activist circles often create a distorted picture of where Democratic voters are politically.

“The perception broadly, when people think about Democratic primary voters, is to sort of look at their timeline and expect that the kind of conversation that they see on social media is a reflection of the Democratic base,” deGruyter said. “And the reality is that is a funhouse mirror of who even Democratic primary voters are.”

DeGruyter argued many of the positions embraced by DSA activists remain politically toxic in the battleground areas Democrats need to win back after the party’s 2024 losses.

“You can have a conversation about what it takes to win a Democratic primary in deep-blue places,” she said. “But the reality is the kinds of positions that the DSA stands for are anathema to the kinds of voters that Democrats lost in the last election and need to win back.”

At the same time, even some critics of the movement acknowledge that progressive candidates have successfully capitalized on voter dissatisfaction with establishment Democrats. That dynamic has increasingly shaped internal Democratic politics as party leaders grapple with how aggressively to confront or accommodate the movement’s rise.

The socialist victories in this year’s primaries come as Democrats are still grappling with the fallout from the party’s losses in 2024. A long-awaited Democratic National Committee postmortem warned that Republicans will continue elevating progressive candidates and positions they believe can make Democrats in battleground races appear out of step with voters.

The report also argued the party needs to rebuild support with working-class voters, men, Latinos, rural communities, the South, and Middle America more broadly, while sharpening its message on affordability, public safety, and candidate quality instead of relying solely on opposition to President Donald Trump. Polling also suggests Democratic voters themselves remain divided over the party’s ideological direction.

A recent New York Times-Siena College poll found that just 25% of Democratic voters wanted the party to move further left, while 52% said they did not. McDermott argued the numbers suggest many voters are less interested in ideology than in candidates they see as authentic and willing to challenge the status quo.

“You could look at that on the surface and say that’s an inherent contradiction,” McDermott said. “To me, it suggests voters are looking for someone who’s willing to fight and who’s capable of delivering results.”

The debate is likely to intensify heading into the 2026 midterm elections and the 2028 presidential cycle as Democrats continue searching for a national message after Trump’s return to power. Teixeira argued the Democratic Party has so far shown little appetite for directly confronting the movement’s growing influence inside the coalition, even as tensions over ideology and electability continue to simmer.

“I think we’re likely to see more accommodation than a real faction fight at this point,” he said.

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McDermott suggested the battles playing out in Democratic primaries now could foreshadow a much larger fight over the party’s identity heading into the 2028 presidential cycle.

“I think a lot of what we’re seeing shake out right now in these midterm primaries is going to be emblematic of what we’re going to see in the presidential primary cycle coming up,” he said.