Socialists will overwhelmingly vote for Kamala Harris

Nothing ever happens

Polls show that an overwhelming 90% of socialists will vote for Kamala Harris in 2024:

This fact is not very interesting.

• The 90% rate is nearly identical to the rate among progressives and liberals.

• The 90% rate is basically unchanged from 2016.

The blogpost below explains that non-story in detail.

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Most polls tell us nothing about socialist voters

How will socialists vote in 2024?

Only polls can answer. Unfortunately, the vast majority of poll results provide no information on how socialists will vote.

Most polls just ask people whether they are a Democrat, Independent, or Republican. For example, in Siena 2024-08-08/15, Democrats will vote 93% Kamala, 5% Trump, 1% DK/REF.

A few polls ask people to identify their ideology as liberal, moderate, or conservative. For example, in YouGov 2024-08-25/27, liberals will vote 92% Kamala, 3% Trump, 1% Stein, 1% other.

The vast majority of polls use one of the two formats above. For our purposes, these are all worthless. It will not surprise you to read that most Democrats are not socialists and most liberals are not socialists.

In short, most polls tell us nothing about how socialist voters will vote.

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Socialists vote a lot like progressives

Usually, “most polls tell us nothing about socialist voters” is where the story would end. As far as I’m aware, not a single poll in the 2016 cycle or 2020 cycle asked socialists how we are voting.

However, that changed last month: Two surveys explicitly included “socialist” in their ideology question.

In mid-August, the University of New Hampshire (UNH) polled three states – New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine – using six ideology labels – socialist, progressive, liberal, moderate, conservative, and libertarian.

What does that data tell us?

As the graph below shows, the overwhelming majority of self-identified socialists in NH, VT, and ME say they will vote for Kamala Harris:

If we combine the three states, that fact is even more obvious: Socialists in NH-VT-ME will vote 91% Kamala, 3% Stein, and 6% other.

With 263 socialist respondents, this poll has a decent sample size for a small ideological group. (Just ~6% of Americans identify as socialists.) However, the UNH polls are limited to three states. What about American socialists across the country?

To my knowledge, just one poll exists: In mid-August, Farleigh Dickinson University (FDU) polled the US using six ideology labels – socialist, progressive, liberal, moderate, conservative, and MAGA.

Again, the overwhelming majority of self-identified socialists say they will vote for Kamala Harris. In this sample, socialists will vote 88% Kamala, 5% Trump, and 7% other:

Unfortunately, this poll has a much smaller sample of socialists: Just 43. It also implies a substantially different result in the number of "patriotic socialists": Where UNH had 1 in 263 socialists voting Trump (0.3%), FDU had 2 of 43 socialists voting Trump (4.7%). This is almost certainly false, and I would prefer the UNH polls here.

Caveats aside, these polls all suggest that an overwhelming ~90% of socialists will vote for Kamala Harris. This is a very high rate of voting for Democrats, similar to the rate seen among progressives & liberals.

In fact, in the UNH poll, the 2-party net margin is exactly the same among socialists, progressives, and liberals: +91 percentage points toward the Democrats. That’s because non-Dem liberals will vote Trump (-1, reduces the margin), while non-Dem socialists will vote Stein (-0, no impact):

In short, socialists vote a lot like progressives.

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Socialist voters probably haven’t changed much since 2016

The evidence above suggests that socialists will overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.

Has this changed over time? While we don’t have polls which explicitly ask socialists how they’re voting, we can look at primary voters for avowed democratic socialist Bernie Sanders.

In fact, just 77% of 2016 Sanders supporters ended up voting Clinton. That’s lower than the 90% rate of voting Dem above! We could take this as proof that socialists have grown closer to the Democratic primary since 2016:

However, most Sanders-Trump voters were pro-labor White conservatives. If we just look at “very liberal” Sanders supporters (who are very likely to be leftists or socialists), again we see that about 90% voted for the Democratic candidate in the general election:

Socialist voters today will vote ~90% for Kamala Harris, just as leftist Sanders voters 8 years ago voted ~90% for Hillary Clinton.

Neither Biden’s support for Israel’s brutal war in Gaza or Democrats’ rightward shift on immigration has lead pro-Dem socialists to turn away from the party en masse.

Neither Biden’s pro-labor NLRB picks, student debt relief, or climate spending has lead anti-Dem socialists to turn toward the party en masse.

In short, socialist voters probably haven’t changed much since 2016.

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Conclusion and shilling

In short: For better and for worse, socialists voters remain tightly tied to the Democratic party. Socialists vote Democrat at rates similar to progressives and liberals. Evidence suggests that will not change in 2024.

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