The DSA has a believability problem with older Black voters. But young people want to take more risks

One of the most heated debates in the Democratic party is how left it should go – especially after a year that has seen several democratic socialists win their primary races. Moderate Democrats worry that left-wing candidates will struggle to win general elections, while progressive voters want fresh solutions to healthcare and the rising cost of living. But largely left out of this debate is one of the most critical bases of the party: Black voters.

A Pew Research Center study found that among Democrats, only 21% of Black voters are likely to positively view candidates who align with democratic socialists, compared to 40% of white, 30% of Asian, and 20% of Hispanic voters.

To better understand this gap, the Guardian spoke to nearly a dozen Black voters about their perceptions of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) – the largest socialist organization in the country, which mostly operates within the Democratic party. The group advocates for a working-class democracy with publicly funded education, as well as housing and healthcare paid through excessive taxes on the rich and corporations. What emerged from the interviews was a clear theme: a generational divide exists between older voters who back establishment Democrats and young people who seek to push the Democratic party more to the left. The trend follows a long tradition of young organizers fueling progressive movements.

In late August, Claire Valdez, the New York seventh congressional district Democratic nominee and longtime DSA leader, won 59.6% of the young Black vote, while only garnering 39.9% of the Black voters over 50 years old (according to a breakdown from the political analyst Michael Lange). Darializa Avila Chevalier, New York’s 13th congressional district Democratic nominee, won 52.8% of Black voters under 50 years old, while receiving 46.4% of votes from older Black constituents. In the aftermath of these wins, political analysts question who the DSA represents, and whether most Black voters feel connected to a socialist message.

Sid Carlson White became involved in the DSA as an undergrad at Yale University in 2017, and officially became a member of the organization five years later. “I realized that DSA was really one of the only places where a regular person could get involved and have real Democratic control over an organization and carry out our goals collectively,” Carlson White said. He thinks the idea that the DSA isn’t reaching Black constituents is outdated.

A member of DSA’s national political committee based in Jersey City, New Jersey, Carlson White, who’s 27, has served in the organization’s nearly 2,000-member Afrosocialists and Socialists of Color caucus, which holds discussions on race and political education. Over the past six years, he said he and other Black and brown members have pushed the organization to improve their outreach to Black communities. Reading circles and group discussions have also helped educate white members on causes such as ending mass incarceration. “We want people to understand that these issues around racial justice, economic equality, job discrimination, police brutality, democracy for Black America are things that we fight for and things that we can deliver on many levels of politics,” Carlson White said.

Two years ago, when Carlson White campaigned for Eon Huntley – a Black DSA-endorsed socialist running for New York state assembly – he noticed a class divide. Huntley’s call for universal rent stabilization resonated with Black renters, while his message fell flat for older and more financially stable Black homeowners. Carlson White drummed up support from tenant organizers fighting against displacement in Black neighborhoods. Though Huntley didn’t win in 2024, he defeated incumbent Stefani Zinerman in the Democratic primary in June 2026.

According to Huntley’s campaign, his vote share in majority-Black precincts rose from 44.9% in 2024 to 57.8% in 2026. “Black Brooklynites understand the threat posed by Big Real Estate better than anyone, because we’ve watched our friends and family being displaced year after year,” Huntley said in a statement to the Guardian. “I believe the voters chose a democratic socialist because they want to remain here, to thrive here, and to pass this community and its culture along to the next generation.”

Founded in Detroit, Michigan, in 1982, the DSA was born from a merger of two leftist groups, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and the New American Movement. The anti-capitalist organization functions as a member-driven network with national leadership and local chapters in every state. Unlike the Democratic party, which operates within established political institutions, the DSA proposes abolishing the Senate and the electoral college. Ending economic and military aid to Israel is another key tenet, which continues to split establishment Democrats. The DSA often backs leftist candidates in electoral campaigns, and members participate in grassroots organizing.

Interest in the political group has surged in the past decade, after the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders, who describes himself as a democratic socialist. The group also grew in popularity when the New York-based DSA member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won a House of Representatives seat in 2018. The New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani’s election in late 2025 marked the organization’s largest electoral victory. Between July 2017 and July 2026, DSA membership grew from 24,000 to more than 120,000.

Over the past year, young Black voters have increasingly supported progressive candidates, diverging from their elders’ endorsements of established Democratic politicians. While Mamdani only garnered 26% support in precincts with at least a 70% Black population, he appealed to young Black voters through social media posts about affordability as well as appearing on radio shows and podcasts such as The Breakfast Club and Ebro in the Morning. According to a DSA survey shared with the Guardian, among DSA dues-paying members who have joined within the past two years, 66% were white, while about 11% were Latino, 6% were Black, and 4.6% were Asian. As for registered Democrats, 56% were white, 18% were Black, 16% were Latino, and 6% were Asian, according to a 2023 Pew Research Center study.

Many older Black voters question the pragmatism of the DSA. While Shirley Sowell, a 66-year-old congregant of Philadelphia’s Salt and Light church, agreed with some DSA policy points such as free childcare, she said she was unsure if she’d vote for a DSA candidate. More progressive members of Congress would be at loggerheads with the Republican party, she said, which would preclude them from accomplishing their lofty goals. “The socialists – they’re out here to help people and to get things that need to be done,” such as lowering housing costs for low-income people, Sowell said. “In today’s time, it’s kind of hard trying to get all that stuff. You’re battling back and forth with the other party.”

But some DSA wins this year have also shown that the group’s message can draw Black voters of all ages – even if the candidate’s connection to the organization is tenuous. In August, Black DSA member Angie Nixon secured votes in counties with the most Black residents by 30 points over retired Lt Col Alexander Vindman in the Florida Democratic primary for US Senate. Nixon, who worked as a community and union organizer for decades, only joined the group in June and was not endorsed by it. And after she became the first DSA member to win a statewide primary, she stated that she doesn’t identify as a socialist.

Nixon’s campaign manager, Eunic Epstein-Ortiz, said in a statement to the Guardian: “As she has consistently said, she doesn’t align with any group 100%.”

Pennsylvania state representative Chris Rabb, a Black DSA member, secured the Democratic primary for Pennsylvania’s majority Black third congressional district in May 2026. “Average voters appear to be more enthused about anti-establishment/anti-corruption candidates who don’t frame problems and solutions with left/right labels, but offer bold platforms that acknowledge & address people’s daily struggles,” Rabb said through text message. The DSA’s advantage has been “its organizing strength that focuses on engaging and educating young, disaffected and/or anti-establishment voters toward mobilizing grassroots efforts to get out the vote in Democratic primaries where conventional campaigns and party apparatuses have chosen not to”.

‘Where else would you go?’

Millennial and gen Z members within the DSA said that the historically white organization is drawing more Black voters than ever before. The DSA struggled with diversity in the past, said member John Lewis, due to a suppression of Black political power throughout national history, which precedes the organization’s formation. Lewis, a 34-year-old Black man from Louisiana who serves on DSA’s national political committee, didn’t become aware of socialism until he was an adult, after several years of organizing.

“There’s been a 100-year-long campaign to disorganize Black people and communities of color, and we know from COINTELPRO [an FBI covert operation] we know this from … white domestic terrorism after the civil war,” Lewis said. “I’ve seen the most conversation and the most interest and curiosity among Black people in DSA this summer than ever.”

Marcus Board, an associate professor of political science at Howard University and a democracy visiting fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, said that there is a long tradition of young people driving socialist movements, which is now reflected in the generational divide seen in Black voters’ support of the DSA.

Socialism has “always been youth-based and youth-driven”, Board said. “A lot of the Black Panther movement was invested in socialist politics. The SNCC [Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee] was invested in socialist politics. Fred Hampton very famously talked about promoting socialism before he was killed at 21 years old in Chicago.”

During the civil rights movement, Black activists and their allies fought to regain political agency that was taken away after the Reconstruction period after the civil war. Black elected officials grew from roughly 1,500 in 1970 to about 4,900 in 1980. Shirley Chisholm’s 1972 run for president, followed by Jesse Jackson’s presidential bids in 1984 and 1988, further solidified Black political power within the Democratic party.

But during that same period, more young Black organizers were interested in starting their own revolutionary movements, rather than falling in line with existing power structures. Now young people are working within the Democratic party to push it to the left, Board said, and are supporting the progressive political movement, the Working Families Party.

Barack Obama’s presidential election may be another reason that young Black voters are more interested in pushing the Democratic party to the left, Board said. “Obama’s presidency has in fact impacted gen Z by making it clear that just because you have a Black president does not mean that you have progressive politics,” Board said.

Older Black voters, on the other hand, “are incredibly pragmatic, and so they’re thinking not just about the future, but also historically and what they believe is actually possible”, said Ranada Robinson at the progressive funding coalition Georgia Alliance for Progress. As the senior director of research and strategy, Robinson studies Black and brown voter behavior through focus groups and statewide surveys in Georgia. “A lot of times when you hear older Black voters talking, they’re weighing the balance between who they want in office and who they think can actually win.”

Lewis, an engineer, learned about socialism for the first time from a Wikipedia page in 2020. “My family comes from both sides of the Mississippi River in Mississippi and Louisiana, living in rural poverty and in urban poverty in Atlanta,” Lewis said. “Seeing those things, you recognize poverty is the correlation between so many of these evils when you talk about health outcomes and crime.”

He saw socialism as a solution to some of the systemic injustices he witnessed, Lewis said: “Democratic control for workers, trying to eliminate poverty, trying to make sure people are cared for.”

A few months later, Lewis helped found the first Baton Rouge DSA chapter recognized by the organization. Initially, Lewis was the only Black person in the chapter, joined by three white members. But within about a year, the group grew to 15 members, with half of them being Black.

Just as young Black people are helping push the Democratic party left, they have also helped expand the DSA’s racial justice platform. Recently, the DSA recognized the historical injustices that Black and Indigenous people have faced by calling for a recognition of tribal sovereignty, honoring treaties and reparations for enslavement.

“Calling for reparations and calling for finishing Reconstruction in the DSA national program didn’t come from nowhere,” Lewis said. “That came from many Black folks and white folks who were like, ‘Hey, this is a priority for me politically. This is something I care about.’”

When Black voters ask Carlson White why they should join the DSA, he tells them that it’s one of the only spaces where a working-class Black person can advocate for economic equality within a democracy. “Where else would you go?” Carlson White said. “DSA really is the only functional home for any sort of radical Black politics that is capable of winning a majority within a mass party.”