For the first time, Democrats favor socialism over capitalism.
A minority of Democrats, 47 percent, view capitalism favorably, a drop from 56 percent in 2016, according to a recent Gallup poll.
Socialism on the other hand gets mostly good reviews from Democrats, with 57 percent saying they view it positively, about the same as in 2010.
Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of Republicans, 71 percent, remain positive about capitalism, while only 16 percent say they view socialism favorably.
Capitalism’s drop in popularity among Democrats may be connected to several Democratic socialist candidates who have captured the imagination of the party.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders became popular with millennials during the 2016 campaign season with policies like making college education and healthcare free. He won 43 percent of his party’s vote for the Democratic presidential nomination, compared to winner Hillary Clinton’s 55 percent.
One of Sanders’s campaign volunteers, self-described Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, herself won the Democratic nomination for a Queens House seat in a major upset that ousted veteran Congressman Joe Crowley.
Party brass, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi have downplayed the idea that the party is careening leftward after Ocasio-Cortez’s win.
“The fact that in a very progressive district in New York it went more progressive than … well, Joe Crowley is a progressive, but she’s more left than Joe Crowley, is about that district. It is not to be viewed as something that stands for anything else,” Pelosi told reporters in June.
Gallup did not offer definitions of “socialism” or “capitalism” to those surveyed but simply asked people’s opinion of each.
The Gallup poll was conducted from July 30 to August 5 on 1505 U.S. adults.