A new poll raises serious questions about the validity of the socialists’ theory for why they are more electable than mainstream Democrats.
The biggest risk Democrats have taken with a socialist candidate so far this year is nominating Graham Platner to challenge Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). Most other socialist wins have happened in overwhelmingly Democratic areas.
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Platner was believed to have greater working-class appeal than Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME) and other possible candidates, and safer, more conventional Democrats have repeatedly lost to Collins, including the heavily favored Sara Gideon in 2020.
Not only does the New York Times–Portland Press Herald-Siena poll show Platner just barely ahead of Collins with 49% to the incumbent’s 47%. It also reveals that Platner is badly underperforming with working-class white voters.
Collins is trouncing Platner among whites without college degrees by 59% to 36%. In the same pollster’s findings in September 2020, Collins led Gideon by just 3 points with this demographic, 48% to 45%. Collins trailed Gideon by 5 points overall but won by just under 9 points in November.
Platner’s actual source of strength is college-educated whites. He is winning this increasingly Democratic voting bloc with 68% of the vote to Collins’s 31%. In September 2020, Gideon’s advantage with college-educated white voters was 57% to Collins’s 37%.
College-educated white people are the reason Platner has a lead over Collins at all, however narrow. He has yet to demonstrate any real strength with the working-class voters he was supposed to lead back to the Democratic Party.
Platner has been hammered by a series of scandals unique to his candidacy, but the working-class struggles may apply to other socialists running for office.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani didn’t rack up his biggest wins in working-class precincts last year. He had a strong appeal to educated, perhaps downwardly mobile but still relatively affluent voters.
Mamdani won 46% of voters with an associate degree (which was a plurality in the three-way race), 57% with a bachelor’s degree, and 57% with an advanced degree. This included 53% of college-educated whites and 64% of nonwhite voters with college degrees, according to exit polls.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo won a 47% plurality of voters without a college degree, including 58% of noncollege whites. He lost nonwhite voters without college degrees by just 9 points.
Cuomo actually beat Mamdani among voters making less than $30,000 a year. Mamdani won most other income groups, but his biggest majorities earned between $50,000 to $99,000 (56%) and $100,00 to $199,000 (55%). Mamdani did better with voters making over $50,000 (52%) than under $50,000 (48%, just a 4-point margin over Cuomo).
New York is expensive enough that even some of the higher-income voters could be considered economically beleaguered, but the class implications of Mamdani’s win are not overwhelmingly clear.
Mamdani did make inroads in the general election with minority voters compared to the Democratic primary, in which he also faced Cuomo. He also attracted younger and newer voters, including some who sat out the 2024 presidential election or declined to back former Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.
The Mamdani-endorsed socialists who won Democratic primaries this year may lean into identity politics more than the mayor did in his successful campaign, compounding working-class problems.
Socialists and other progressives have argued that Democrats keep losing to President Donald Trump because they have abandoned the working class.
“I think it’s important for us to focus on the issues facing working families a little bit more than Graham Platner’s marriage,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said when reporters asked him about Platner’s sexting scandal. The socialist heavyweight has also declared his endorsed candidates are “willing to stand up for working people” and “are taking on the establishment and WINNING.”
When Trump won his second term, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said Democrats “need to be a party of brawlers for the working class.”
The Democrats’ supposedly working-class-coded vice presidential pick, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), didn’t move the needle with those voters, and the Harris-led ticket was heavily dependent on college-educated whites.
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Platner, who still leads Collins by 4 points in the RealClearPolitics polling average, may have similar problems against a Republican with a history of outrunning her polling.
Even if Platner wins, it may be due to political polarization, Trump’s low job approval rating, Maine voters’ preference for a Democratic-controlled Congress, and the college-educated whites who have powered the Resistance for a decade rather than a new working-class revolution.
