A new Fox News national poll finds 55 percent of registered voters view the Democratic Socialists of America unfavorably, and Republicans are building their entire midterm playbook around that number.
The Fox News survey, conducted September 11, 14, 2026, found that roughly three in ten registered voters hold a favorable opinion of the DSA, while a clear majority, 55 percent, see the organization negatively. For a Republican Party working to frame the midterms as a choice election rather than a referendum on the party in power, the numbers amount to a ready-made contrast.
President Trump made the case bluntly at the GOP midterm convention on September 9 at American Airlines Center in Dallas. He told the crowd that the Democratic establishment has lost control of its own party.
"In state after state, the Democrat establishment has been overthrown and replaced by crazed lunatics and radicals. They call themselves Democrat socialists, but actually, they're communists."
House Speaker Mike Johnson echoed the framing. He told Fox News Digital that the midterms present a clean split for voters.
"This really is a contrast election between common sense candidates... and crazy, and that's what the other side represents."
The Republican messaging is not abstract. DSA-endorsed candidates have racked up primary wins across the country, giving the GOP specific names and platforms to run against. Twenty-eight DSA-endorsed candidates won Democratic primaries this cycle, and if all of them prevail in November, the group could form a 43-member bloc in the House, the New York Post reported.
In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, a DSA-aligned Senate nominee, topped the more moderate Rep. Haley Stevens in the August primary. He spoke at the Michigan Democratic Party convention in Lansing on August 29. In New York City, a June 18 rally drew congressional candidates Claire Valdez, Brad Lander, and Darializa Avila Chevalier alongside Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
The pattern extends well beyond those two states. Colorado congressional nominee Melat Kiros, who ousted a 15-term incumbent in her primary, denied being a communist but defended socialism on the record. "Socialism has proven to deliver on the values of the Declaration of Independence more than capitalism has," Kiros said.
Meanwhile, DSA member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez leads early 2028 Democratic presidential polling in New Hampshire with 22 percent support, up from 15 percent in February, and combined DSA-aligned support from Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders accounts for more than a quarter of that electorate, the Washington Examiner noted.
Ocasio-Cortez quietly rejoined the DSA after a seven-year membership lapse, reinforcing the organization's growing hold on the party's most prominent figures.
What makes the Republican strategy more than a branding exercise is the DSA's own published agenda. The organization's "Workers Deserve More" platform proposes abolishing the U.S. Senate, replacing the presidency and the Supreme Court with institutions selected by Congress, establishing public ownership of large corporations, and granting amnesty to all illegal immigrants, the Associated Press reported.
Roughly half of the DSA's national leadership identify as communists, according to PBS host Margaret Hoover. Sen. Ted Cruz responded to the platform directly: "These people are insane."
That platform is not a Republican caricature. It is the DSA's own document, written in the DSA's own words. And the candidates running under its banner are winning Democratic primaries, not losing them.
Some in the party have argued that democratic socialists are "fundamentally pro-democracy," but the DSA's stated positions, eliminating two of three branches of government as currently constituted, make that claim harder to sustain with each new platform plank.
Veteran Republican strategist Erin Maguire, a 2020 Trump campaign veteran who later ran communications for Sen. Ted Cruz, told Fox News Digital the poll numbers confirm what her party already sensed.
"Democrats continuing to lurch further and further to the left with their socialist base is not something Americans want."
Maguire added: "I do think it validates Republicans because Republicans are aiming to make this a choice election."
Ty Strong, founder and president of the Moderate PAC, a Democratic-aligned group, conceded the danger to his own side. He told Fox News the GOP playbook "absolutely could be effective." The midterms, Strong said, "should be a much bigger wave, but I don't think it's going to be as big as it could have been if we didn't have this DSA and attacks that Republicans are going to use."
That admission from a moderate Democrat is striking. Strong is not a Republican operative looking to spin favorable coverage. He is a Democrat warning his own party that its left flank is costing it seats.
Among Democrats specifically, 59 percent hold a favorable view of the DSA, a number that helps explain why DSA-backed candidates keep winning primaries even as the broader electorate recoils. The gap between the Democratic base and the general electorate is the precise fault line Republicans intend to exploit.
Some Democratic Socialists have floated Ocasio-Cortez for president while worrying she may not be left enough, a concern that itself illustrates how far the DSA's center of gravity has shifted from mainstream voters.
The Democratic National Committee pushed back. DNC Deputy Communications Director Kendall Witmer told Fox News Digital that the Republican focus on socialism is a distraction from pocketbook failures.
"Republicans are facing record-low approval numbers and have no midterm message after spiking costs, raising gas prices, and driving up inflation."
Witmer's claim about "record-low approval numbers" stands unverified in the available polling, the Fox News survey measured views of the DSA, not Republican job approval. No supporting data for her claim appeared alongside it.
Shannon Jackson, a consultant and adviser to progressive Rep. Ro Khanna of California and a veteran of both Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns, dismissed the Republican strategy as grasping. "I think they're reaching for things," Jackson said. "I think the DSA issue is something they're trying to make something, but it is not."
Jackson pointed to Sanders as proof that the socialist label loses its sting over time. "You can do these broad strokes of painting it as communist and things like that," he said. "They tried to do that for Bernie, and now he's the most popular senator and politician in America."
But the comparison has limits. Sanders ran as an independent who caucused with Democrats. The DSA candidates winning primaries in 2026 are not just caucusing, they are reshaping the party's platform from inside, and that platform now includes positions that go far beyond anything Sanders proposed in 2016 or 2020.
Not every DSA-aligned candidate has thrived, some have suffered defeats that suggest the movement's ceiling may be lower than its loudest supporters believe. But the overall trajectory in 2026 favors the DSA wing, and the Fox News poll suggests the general electorate has noticed.
The Republican midterm argument is straightforward: Democratic primary voters are nominating candidates the rest of the country does not want. The Fox News poll puts a number on that disconnect. Fifty-five percent unfavorable is not a soft signal. It is a majority of registered voters telling pollsters they reject what the DSA stands for.
For Republicans, the task now is connecting individual Democratic candidates to that unfavorable brand in district after district. For Democrats, the challenge is explaining why their primary voters keep choosing nominees whose national organization wants to abolish the Senate and hand the presidency to Congress.
When your opponents make up your attack ads for you, the polite thing to do is say thank you.
