Since 2018, the Heartland Institute has monitored the success of socialist candidates in midterm and general elections. This year, socialists again won a variety of political offices at the national, statewide, and local levels, reinforcing the fact that socialists have indeed gained a toehold throughout the United States.

In 2024, as detailed in the Heartland Institute’s latest edition of Socialist Watch, socialist candidates won 94 percent of the races they participated in. Moreover, most of these races were won easily, with socialists beating their opponents by an average margin of 49 percentage points.

The winning percentage and average margin of victory for socialists in 2024 parallels the rate at which socialist candidates won in 2022 and 2020, however, it appears that the total number of socialists running in 2024 may have been far fewer than in years past.

Beginning in the 2018 midterm election, my colleagues and I began tracking the total number of socialists running for political offices. To determine whether a candidate was definitely a socialist, he or she must have been endorsed by one of these three organizations: Our Revolution, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and/or the Progressive Democrats of America (PDA).

All these groups openly advocate for socialist ideology and support far-left collectivist policies such as Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, wealth taxes, canceling student loans, etc. In recent election cycles, these organizations have also endorsed candidates they deem worthy of championing the socialist banner.

In 2018, Our Revolution, the DSA, and or/the PDA endorsed 86 socialist candidates. In 2020, this number ballooned to 266. In 2022, the number of socialists endorsed by one of the big three socialist organizations fell to 132. In 2024, they endorsed “only” 51 socialists.

While this alone may seem like a victory for freedom and an outright rejection of socialism, there is definitely more to the story.

First, it should be noted that the DSA, arguably the most influential socialist organization in the United States, took a different tack in 2024 concerning their candidate endorsement process. In previous election cycles, the DSA endorsed scores of socialist candidates on their national website. But this was not the case in 2024. Rather, this year, the DSA endorsed only a handful of candidates directly on its national website while farming out the endorsement process to its statewide and local chapters.

Second, many past endorsees who ran for re-election in 2024 did not receive an official endorsement from Our Revolution, the DSA, or the PDA this year. Of course, there are countless reasons as to why many of these surefire socialists failed to receive an endorsement for the 2024 election cycle. Perhaps these organizations did not want to taint an office seeker with the socialist label. Or, maybe they were reluctant to draw national attention to candidates running for statewide or local offices.

To be perfectly honest, I do not know exactly how the DSA, Our Revolution, or the PDA determined who and who not to endorse this time around.

What I do know is that the vast majority of their past endorsees who ran again in 2024 did not become free-market capitalists since their last campaign. In fact, the overwhelming majority of the candidates who had been previously endorsed by one of three aforementioned groups have maintained their socialist bond fides.

Here are just a few examples to prove the point: In previous years, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) were both endorsed by at least one of the three groups. This year, neither received an endorsement from one of the big three socialist organizations. Yet, both Waters and Lieu cruised to victory this year as they openly campaigned as far-left socialists.

The point is that it is misguided to simply look at the total number of endorsements made by Our Revolution, the DSA, and/or the PDA in 2024 as a bellwether for the current state of the socialist movement in the United States. A more apt analysis would focus on the fact that more than 90 percent of the socialist candidates endorsed in 2024 won their races -- with most winning by huge margins.

If the 2024 edition of Socialist Watch included every candidate endorsed by the DSA’s statewide and local chapters, the total number of socialists on the ballot this year would have been much higher. But doing so would have significantly altered the data compared to previous editions. If we had included all the DSA’s endorsements outside of the national chapter this year, the 2024 report would not have been an apples-to-apples comparison to previous editions.

Of course, the results of the 2024 Socialist Watch can be interpreted and spun in many different ways depending on one’s political persuasion. However, the fact remains that socialists are continuing to make inroads across all levels of government, which is something every American ought to know and something we ought to keep an eye on in the years to come.

Chris Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.org) is editorial director at The Heartland Institute.

Image: Our Revolution, DSA, PDA