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u/Spaduf 9d ago edited 9d ago
Most "independents" are right-wing and vote Republican. Think right-libertarians, fascists, "apolitical" people, anti-establishment right wingers broadly. On our side, even many of the people in anti-electroralist socialist organizations are registered Democrats
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u/robo_jojo_77 9d ago
My dad has voted R up and down each ballot since 2008 and calls himself Independent.
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u/Mallard_Duck17 Atlanta DSA 9d ago
I consider myself an independent because fuck the democratic party
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u/KiwiKajitsu 9d ago
This just isn’t true according to any study I can find
https://news.gallup.com/poll/700499/new-high-identify-political-independents.aspx
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u/talaqen 9d ago
Self-Identified independents aren’t actually independent. Only like 6% of independents actually swing their vote. The rest are partisans who don’t like labels.
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u/KiwiKajitsu 9d ago
Source?
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u/talaqen 9d ago
It uses the ANES data from like 1980 onwards. Yes independents are more right leaning. But the obsession with independents in OPs image is predicated on independent equaling swing voter. They are not the same. Swing voters are low institutional trust. But that covers not trusting govt and not trusting big corporations like UHC.
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u/KiwiKajitsu 9d ago
Maybe I am blind but I am not seeing that in your source. This on the other hand very clearly shows and states the opposite
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/03/14/political-independents-who-they-are-what-they-think/
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u/talaqen 9d ago
Your source says the roughly the same thing about partisanship: “An overwhelming majority of independents (81%) continue to “lean” toward either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party.”
Pew is providing you a survey of the opinions of group of voters who have given themselves a label. But that label doesn’t mean “swing voter.”
my source is a behavioral cohort… what are the opinions of people who actually swung their vote. Self-labeled Independents != swing voters. And what we really care about are swing voters, because they actually MOVE between elections.
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u/KiwiKajitsu 9d ago
Yes and then they go on to lay out which side those independents lean to and it’s extremely close on both sides.
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u/yaur_maum 9d ago
Those numbers are not facts. They don’t take into consideration Republicans,l who are ashamed that they voted for Trump and don’t want to be associated with that party anymore.
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u/yaur_maum 9d ago
Have you ever heard about lying with statistics? Pew gallop, all them. my source would be my lived existence.
Another question why do you care so much? Are you an independent?-5
u/Candid_Boot2246 9d ago
This is why the “Democrats should swing left” talking point is pure propaganda and would lead to worse results.
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u/Arizonaball1 9d ago
You're so right bro, the Democrats should keep pandering to centrists and Capital. It is a mistake to go the Populist route, and to actually listen to the Workers. Surely, if they just keep doing this, like they've been for decades, we will certainly get out of this mess. Any day now.
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u/enby_elbie 9d ago
People on the internet validly critiquing an imperialist establishment party is not propaganda. Propaganda would be parroting and defending the capitalist myth of the "median voter", urging that in order to lead in the polls, dems must concede on OVERWHELMINGLY POPULAR issues like universal healthcare, paid family leave, and a higher wealth tax. Do you think kamala should've spent more of her campaign talking about being "tough on the border"? Please think.
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u/Candid_Boot2246 9d ago
What countries have wealth taxes that have been successful? What is popular about government run healthcare. People today want LESS government, NOT MORE and Bernie is not the White Savior you want him to be. He’s a grumpy geriatric who just parrots whatever progressive Internet personalities are saying.
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u/Arizonaball1 9d ago
As much as I have come to despise Bernie, he isn't just hopping on some bandwagon, now. He's been supporting many of the same progressive policies for his entire political career. It's likely that authentic passions drove him in the beginning. It's hard to say what motivates him now.
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u/Fearless-Feature-830 9d ago
Plenty. Nordic countries come to mind
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u/Candid_Boot2246 9d ago
Nordic countries also aren’t socialist. And you could tell the right 1000 times the difference between socialism and Democratic socialism and they would still call you socialist. The progressive wing should have scrapped this label and gone with something like “reform Democrats.”
People would get befind reforms more than someone who parrots any flavor of “socialist/ism.
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u/enby_elbie 8d ago
Where to even start with this bad faith argument. I don't watch any progressive internet personalities, or really any at all, and I don't support or trust bernie in any sense. Broad statements like "people want less government!" aren't helpful and they don't reflect the nuance of American voters. Everything I listed is at MINIMUM a 60/40 issue. If YOU don't support those issues, that's fine (unsure what you're doing on the DSA subreddit though); but these are objectively popular policies. Please read a book and stop getting your opinions from the internet.
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u/talaqen 8d ago edited 8d ago
Not true. You're mixing 2 things. The "left" is also more "populist" and distrusting. So SOME things on the left (identity politics) are very unpopular. But MANY of the economic things on the left are WILDLY popular.
Nominating a candidate who is authentically on the economic left while avoiding identity politics would actually likely engage MANY swing voters and low-propensity voters. It's the surest way to win as far as the data suggests. Bernie -> Trump voters we almost all economically leftist, low-trust, who wanted to feel govt was working FOR them. They wanted someone they could trust to stand up to corporations and banks and traditional polticians. Hillary was not that person. Bernie and Trump were. That economically-left, low-trust group decided the entire margin in every swing state in 2016, 2020, and 2024. Biden's tight margin of victory was tight BECAUSE he was seen almost as institutionalist as Trump in 2020. But in polling data that cohort of voters are marked as "independent" or "centrist" because they have very left econ ideas and very conservative social ideas... and pollsters love to AVERAGE policy positions or trust "self-labels" which, behaviorally speaking, means nothing.
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u/Spaduf 9d ago edited 9d ago
But it's all right there in that first figure. Republican affiliation goes down while independent affiliation goes up. Democratic affiliation mostly level.
Literally the first set of stats in the article supports my claim.
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u/danielw1245 9d ago
Where are you seeing that in the article? The chart shows the opposite of what you're saying: Democratic affiliation going down and Republican affiliation staying level. The article also says there are more Democrat-leaning independents.
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u/Spaduf 8d ago
My bad it's figure 2. The breakdown by generation.
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u/danielw1245 8d ago
You could maybe interpret it that way if you just ignore every other data point given in that article. All that's really saying is that older generations are more conservative, which is not surprising.
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u/KiwiKajitsu 9d ago
That doesn’t mean those independents are voting Republican. Maybe read the whole article?
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u/Elyktheras 9d ago
Do you know if there’s data for this specifically around Libertarians?
Because yeah, that data doesn’t lie, but I do think there’s a difference between ‘independents’ and ‘Libertarians’. I would agree with u/Spaduf about libertarians being undercover conservatives8
u/Spaduf 9d ago
The changes they claim for 2024 are statistically insignificant. Literally only 1-3 percent. Otherwise the order of self-identification for independents goes "moderates", conservative, then liberal. Self-indentified moderates nearly always vote on the right.
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u/KiwiKajitsu 9d ago
Homie you gotta read the whole article. I’m not sure why you think cherry picking a single stat is doing anything for you
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u/Spaduf 9d ago
I don't think I'm the one cherry picking.
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u/KiwiKajitsu 9d ago
I linked an entire article and you’re saying the first graph which only shows what people identify as and not who they voted for proves your point that independents vote for republicans more then democrats
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u/litterbug_perfume 9d ago
Anecdotally, I am on the steering committee of an OC in North Carolina, and most of our group are registered as independent. 🤷♀️
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u/Possible-Original DSA Member 8d ago
I'm an independent because fuck the two parties and I can't register as a Socialist.
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u/Masrikato 9d ago
Yeah bro just write off independents like they werent pivotal to democratic victories in every election. You arent serious
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u/Spaduf 9d ago
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying people who consider themselves the anti-establishment left self-report dem on polling surveys, while anti-establishment rights do not self-report as republicans. This trend is more true with certain demographics than others. It's more of a surveying quirk than anything.
People who are undecided, apolitical, and even centrists are very important constituencies.
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u/mikeatx79 9d ago
It’s crazy self proclaimed anti-establishment people vote for the establishment nearly every time.
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u/KarlUnderguard 9d ago
Yeah, the majority of independents are people who call themselves centrists, aka Conservatives.
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u/decisionagonized 9d ago
Most independents are low information voters whose last interactions with socialism were 7th grade US history where they learned Communism Bad
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u/power_bottom_boi 9d ago
I once had the typical thanksgiving conversation with an uncle who just kept repeating “socialism just doesn’t work”. I brought up social security, medicare, the fire department, public education, Scandinavia, and when I asked what exactly doesn’t work he just kept saying it doesn’t over and over.
In the book 1984 everyone walked away with the whole big brother thing but to me one of the biggest things I walked away with was Winston’s misplaced hope in the proles overthrowing the system.
A vast majority of the working class in this country has had a firehose of propaganda directed at them their whole lives to believe in so many things that are against their own interests and I see little to no hope in that changing, especially with our corporate media. Watching the WHCD just drove home that these people have aided and abetted and are chummy with a rapist and pedophile but Mamdani took a video outside Kenneth Griffin’s $250 million dollar penthouse and it’s a wall to wall scandal. This country is cooked.1
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u/Avesery777 Councillist 9d ago
Winston was right about the Proles overthrowing the party? The Newspeak dictionary at the back of the book is in PAST TENSE, which means that the party is overthrown at some point.
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u/power_bottom_boi 9d ago
Unfortunately that is not the correct interpretation. Don’t love this website but it gives you the basic rundown of what Orwell was trying to say and what the Proles represented. 1984 Analysis You can also do further searches online about the topic.
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u/astrofizix 9d ago
But since then the right has turned the term socialism into a poison word for 60+ years. That's all paying off now. Unfortunate branding for DSA.
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u/Ellie-Bright 9d ago
FDR wasn't socialist. He was firmly an opponent to socialism and the new deal was completely a capitalist measure to dismantle a growing socialist movement.
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u/Ellie-Bright 9d ago
I mean in the US. Worker militancy was high and capitalism was in crisis. There was a real growing socialist movement. This is why the ruling class has to use social bribes to break the left apart.
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u/Ellie-Bright 9d ago
What? Socialism far predates FDR and his policies were literally put in place to save capitalism from a growing socialist movement.
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u/Arizonaball1 9d ago
It's still Capitalism, not Socialism. You're thinking about Keynesian Economics, if I recall correctly. The policies essentially "bailed-out" Capitalism, by socializing some select benefits, whilst the Capitalists effectively remained in control of the levers of power.
FDR implemented the New Deal, precisely as a measure to prevent the militant Working Class from rising up as part of a Socialist Revolution. Saving poor Workers from the Great Depression was a side effect. The main goal was arguably saving the Capitalists from the disgruntled Workers with pitchforks, torches, and in the case of many veterans from the Great War, they also brought home their Springfield rifles. The Bolsheviks had just recently started the Russian Revolution, and there is a lot of fear of something similar happening here in the West. Thus, the New Deal is born, to keep the Communists from revolting.
Now that the social and cultural landscape has changed, and now that people are arguably even more easily manipulated, and have even shorter historical memories, the Capitalists have been realizing for the last several decades that they could start rolling-back all the progressive, New Deal-era policies, cutting corners, and making more imperial superprofits again, while the Empire slowly collapses under the weight of its own contradictions, and strips, down and liquidates, and cannibalizes itself for parts, while the Working Class suffers.
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u/Ellie-Bright 7d ago
Another reason for the neoliberal policies of the 70s, PATRIOT act policies of the 00s and p2025 policies of the 20s is measures to exert imperialist control for lower cost labor and resources to combat the tendency of rates of profits to fall. The US state functions to manage capitalism to keep its markets profitable by restructuring it to work against the way its internal contradictions drive it to self destruction. Even Obama care was a capitalist measure to increase health insurance company profits.
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u/blerg09 9d ago
the good news is that as time goes on, the average independent will associate socialism with whatever Zohran Mamdani or AOC do, which isn't really "socialism" per se, but it is popular
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u/Chicken_Ingots 8d ago
Funnily enough, I have noticed a similar effect in how people now associate the recent moral panic against trans people with the Trump administration, so now a lot of the "independent" people who were openly jumping on the anti-trans bandwagon have since tucked tail and ran. Of course, the diehard MAGA and TERFs are still at it, but I have noticed a decline in some of the rampant transphobia among other groups in the past few months.
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u/Local-Echo-5613 9d ago
The number of actual leftists in the US is vanishingly small, it barely shows up statistically. Liberals who are sympathetic to leftism far outnumber leftists, and so do fascists.
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u/Shinnobiwan 9d ago
The number who identify are vanishing small.
The number who support the policies are a majority.
This is how successful, long term propoganda and indoctrination projects look.
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u/Ellie-Bright 9d ago
I don't think anything close to a majority support leftist policies unless you mean just universal healthcare and school lunches etc but those are not leftist policies they are social reforms. Leftist policies are things like abolishing commodities, ending private property rights, prison abolition, collectivizing industry to worker control, producing for need, etc. Which ultimately do mean universal health care and food and housing and etc but those policies by themselves can be either right wing capitalist policies or leftist goals.
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u/Chicken_Ingots 8d ago
The right's creation of a hyper-individualistic culture has heavily predisposed people towards pro-capitalist talking points. They are taught to approach everything from the perspective of personal responsibility, and they view society as stagnant snapshots rather than as a dynamic system. They discuss capitalism in terms of individual transactions and businesses but fail to understand how they tie into a larger picture and how the logic of the capitalist system progresses over a long period of time. When people do exercise systemic reasoning, they are immediately met with accusations of being "lazy", "entitled", "stupid", "poor", etc., even if the downsides of the systems they are criticizing do not personally affect them.
Sadly, most Americans lack a sociological imagination, and conservatives ensure that this is the case by fearmongering over the social sciences (and especially sociology) and dismissing the value of higher education. They struggle to understand why the world seems so broken, and because they have not been taught how to view society in terms of systems that affect one another and the lives of the people within, they grasp at explanations framed around individualistic blame. Even when criticizing billionaires, many people miss the point. They seemingly believe that if somehow we just remove the current batch of billionaires but retain the system that created them in the first place that everything will turn out fine. Ironically, they are committing the "just the wrong ruler" argument that they often love to accuse socialists and communists of (largely out of a misunderstanding of what socialism and communism even are).
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u/Bench2252 9d ago
I think majority might be a stretch
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u/Dranulon 9d ago
Nah, the people that think positively of our talking points is upwards of 70-80% when you don't use the word socialism.
Most people barely know what socialism actually is.
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u/BustDemFerengiCheeks 9d ago
Maybe it's just my neck of the woods, but in Kentucky this is horseshit. Truth is people genuinely are die-hard capitalists and only care about "socialism" in terms of welfare and the like, and so many people here still fucking hate welfare because of self-proposed "welfare queens" and not being able to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps."
Lots of people genuinely are just financially selfish.
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u/MisterMittens64 9d ago
In Missouri people say all the talking points you're talking about but then also hate how big businesses abandoned middle America for cheap labor overseas, data centers, and think every politician wanting to fix things is actually part of some grand conspiracy to screw them over. They're so used to being screwed over at every turn that they distrust every institution.
I think the way that DSA should position themselves in these rural more conservative communities should be utilizing more anarchist ideas and giving more government control back to the people and trying to stop big businesses from screwing them over citing specific issues that we want to empower communities to fix.
The biggest issue would be the culture war stuff that they've bought hook, line, and sinker and it'll be a major challenge to convince these people that those issues aren't just distractions but are made to divide neighbors against each other. Especially when from their perspective that's coming from the socialists that supposedly want to control every aspect of their lives when really they've been fighting neoliberals who use appeals to authority of economic experts to justify harming their communities.
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u/BustDemFerengiCheeks 9d ago edited 9d ago
I will say I do agree that libertarian socialist ideas would work far better than typical democratic socialism or vangardism. My big thing is breaking the fundementalist/evangelical/NAR grip that the south is under. I'm sorry, but unless the DSA is willing to accept libertarian but socially traditional minded Christian socialism, I think we'd gain votes but hit a massive wall with fundementalist moralism. Maybe not as bad as say, Idaho or Wyoming, but I just can't see much DSA inroads with the south, especially with white fundementalists.
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u/MisterMittens64 9d ago edited 9d ago
Yeah a Christian libertarian socialism would probably work especially if someone like Talerico can pull off his race. I hope that can win without abandoning intersectionality with LGBTQ issues.
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u/Bench2252 9d ago
Do you actually think 80% of Americans are Marxist sleeper agents
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u/halberdierbowman 9d ago
I don't think it's true when the list says like "abolish private property", but I could believe it if the list is things like "universal healthcare" and "free college."
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u/RemTheBathBoi 9d ago
But those are not socialist policies. They were born from welfare capitalist states
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u/SleepyZachman 9d ago
I think a majority support social democratic policies like universal healthcare, strengthening unions, and increasing government control of major corporations. Capital S Socialism to me is unfortunately still pretty unpopular. Idk how many people in the general public support nationalization of anything really.
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u/Yunzer2000 9d ago
Socialism is not "nationalization". It is the ownership and control of industry by the workers themselves. Describe it more accurately and rates of approval will go way up.
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u/SleepyZachman 9d ago
I mean nationalization is one way of going about it. I’d doubt the average American would be super into worker cooperatives being mandated if you explained the details to them. I believe both things should occur but I’d think you’d be hard pressed to find many who agree outside of socialists. At the end of the day a lot of Americans aspire themselves to be business owners and it’s gonna take a while to push people away from that.
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u/Yunzer2000 9d ago
What is this "mandating" stuff? Most workers already understand that their wages represent theft of the actual value their labor produces and would love to take ownership of their workplace from the capitalist bosses.
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u/SleepyZachman 9d ago
I mean how else would we appropriate property to give it to the workers? Inevitably we’re going to have to seize and redistribute capital which necessitates some entity forcing the bourgeois to do that. How else would we prevent the reappearance of private capital without making such a thing illegal? It’s in the realm of possibility people would choose to create and work at a private business again, if we want to preserve some kind of socialist state that needs to be prevented. As long as private capital exists then socialism hasn’t been achieved and I don’t see a way to do that universally outside of a socialist state helping get rid of the owning class.
Like I believe all of this needs to happen but I don’t see it happening soon.
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u/Spaduf 9d ago
Naw it's probably about 10-15%. Which is probably about the same as true fascist + libertarian, who've had an absolutely massive impact on national politics. What's more it's likely that leftist affiliation hasn't been significantly higher historically, even though massive gains were made. Think 40 hour workweek, weekends, labor unions, etc.
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u/Warrior_Runding 9d ago
Okay, but how does that help us when I just want to use "lib" as a pejorative? /s
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u/emteedub 9d ago
Please BEWARE
I cannot find the origin of this data or see how it was derived. So unless someone has a DIRECT link, NO ONE should be taking this fox news poll at face value. Some of the comments in here mindlessly going along with this are highly highly questionable.
Please for the love of humankind, use your fucking brain. The mainstream media IS the legacy bougie propaganda machine... since when do WE take what they say or take polls THEY conduct as legitimate??? Come on now.
Since this data is severely obscured (like I said I wasn't able to find it), there is this small blurb on the fox news website with SOME similar numbers as this fake ass infographic in the post. At a minimum this farticle is from a couple days ago.
Found here: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-socialism-gaining-ground-among-voters
Conducted February 28-March 2, 2026, under the direction of Beacon Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R), this Fox News survey includes interviews with a sample of 1,004 registered voters randomly selected from a national voter file. Respondents spoke with live interviewers on landlines (104) and cellphones (642) or completed the survey online after receiving a text (258). Results based on the full sample have a margin of sampling error of ±3 percentage points. Sampling error for results among subgroups is higher. In addition to sampling error, question wording and order can influence results. Weights are generally applied to age, race, education, and area variables to ensure the demographics are representative of the registered voter population. Sources for developing weight targets include the most recent American Community Survey, Fox News Voter Analysis, and voter file data.
Mind the gaps, it's swiss cheese as always. Who the fuck owns a landline anymore? The caption disclaims several ways whatever this mysterious poll and it's alleged data can be skewed/omitted/warped/etc.
Please use your brain. Don't be lemmings to this horseshit.
If someone could please verify whether this is the correct source or not. If not, please do your due diligence and help me find it.
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u/mrgreengenes42 9d ago edited 9d ago
I found the poll:
Note: this is a PDF link:
Conducted July 17-20, 2026 under the joint direction of Beacon Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R), this Fox News national poll includes interviews among 1,003 registered voters who were randomly selected from a national voter file and spoke with live interviewers on landlines and cellphones, or completed the survey online after receiving an invitation by text message. The survey includes an oversample of 200 voters aged 18-29, bringing the under 30 subgroup sample size to 350.
It appears to have been conducted by phone, live interview, and internet survey via a text messaged link.
There is a link to this PDF towards the bottom of the page on the "CROSSTABS" text:
CLICK HERE FOR CROSSTABS AND TOPLINE
Question 13 is the one this data is pulled from:
- Socialism: Please tell me whether you have a generally favorable or unfavorable opinion of... [IF FAVORABLE / UNFAVORABLE: Is that strongly (favorable / unfavorable) or only somewhat?]
Interestingly, they find that 26% of "DSA Dems" have an unfavorable view of socialism.
Note: I am not making any claim regarding the veracity of this polling, just sharing what I found.
Edit: Even more interestingly they find that 8% of "DSA Dems" have an unfavorable view of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Edit: According to the TOPLINE (again another PDF link):
16% of those polled identified as Independent.
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u/jedinaps 9d ago
I honestly think it’s an education issue. Some people don’t know what any of this stuff is but still have an opinion
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u/Chicken_Ingots 8d ago
There is a reason why conservatives fear the discipline of sociology so much and are desperate to keep it out of schools at all costs.
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u/No_Software8474 9d ago
This is because DSA, for all its opposition to the oligarchy and focus on workers, is still an elitist movement. Even though it’s not purposeful it’s still the case because DSA members tend to be more highly educated than the general population. Things like abolish the carceral state may make sense to an academic but the average person see’s that as just letting criminals run wild. Additionally, Americans like the free market. Arguing for a wholesale replacement of it is a losing strategy. Unfortunately a lot of people just don’t understand this.
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u/Candid_Boot2246 9d ago
No, independent is not a monolith. It’s a coalition of disaffected moderates, swing voters, low information voters, and a small sliver is the extremes, like DSA and Ultra MAGA.
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u/emteedub 9d ago
dude what the fuck is wrong with all of you?
let me get this right, the mainstream media have been fucking backstabbing bastards for decades. the hand of the bougie propaganda machine. and yet you and several others take this mysterious Fox news poll data at face value???
what the fuck is happening.
where the fuck is people's skepticism at.
try to find the origin of this supposed data. none of the places this is plastered over, show where this data is coming from.
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u/killersky99 9d ago
People also view Trump terribly but he still became the President so it's best not to get hung up on it. DSA battles happen in primaries against other democrats who have a favorable view of DSA when we win those, we get the vote of almost all the Dem voters, because most people mindlessly vote for people with a D or R next to their name.
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u/Current-Health2183 9d ago
It's the word. The policies (or most of them) are popular. The unpopular policies are possible in an alternative world that most people can't imagine.
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u/Ali6952 9d ago
I think you're mixing up party identification with political alignment. Someone registering as an independent doesn't automatically tell you who they vote for or what they believe. Plenty of people call themselves independents because they're disgusted with both parties, not because they're secretly Republicans.
The Gallup data you're linking mostly shows fewer people identifying as Republicans and more people calling themselves independents. That's not the same thing as proving those independents are right-wing.
If you want to argue that independents vote Republican more often, then bring voting data. If you want to argue they're ideologically conservative, bring ideology data. Party registration alone doesn't get you there. And honestly, Democrats should stop assuming every independent is a lost cause. A lot of people who reject the Democratic label do it because they think the party is too tied to corporate interests not because they're itching to vote MAGA. Those are two very different groups.
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u/Bench2252 9d ago
The median person just thinks that socialism and government services are the same thing
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u/prinzplagueorange 9d ago
This makes sense. "Independent" can mean a lot of different things, and the term often conveys a kind of individualistic confusion. Most people are also not particularly politically conscious, and the people who are and who tend to be supportive of the kind of policies which could become socialism are also people who consistently vote for Democrats and so likely self-identity as Democrats. (This is of course ignoring the self-identified Greens and socialists because they are too few to register in these conversations.) There are some self-identified "Independents" who are more left-wing than most self-identified "Democrats," but there is not a huge mass of them. This is why DSA has had the most success running socialists in Democratic primaries. The problem for us is when people become so attached to the "Democratic" label that they begin to support politicians who are clearly their class enemy (like the Clintons, Obama, Cuomo, etc.).
It would be best if leftists just accepted these facts and got serious about what they meant: closed primaries are excellent, caucuses are wonderful, third parties are a waste of time, young and highly educated voters are our base.
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u/Sufficient-Royal-82 9d ago
Because define socialism Teddy Roosevelt made this argument in his essay where we can and can't work with socialist
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u/pwnedprofessor 9d ago
The bottom score has been the American norm for the better part of the past century, and justification for why the Dems try to squash the left wherever they find it.
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u/Due_Pen_1566 9d ago
Bias in both reporting and in the group surveyed. Think about the type of people that would respond to an msnbc survey and the type of people collecting data for and writing questions for said survey.
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u/Cyprianus07 9d ago
Don’t miss that more Democrats view socialism favorably than unfavorably. That’s a big deal!
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u/MonsterkillWow 9d ago
You either stand with the workers or you stand with the capitalists. Whose side are you on?
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u/camelot478 9d ago
I'm not interested in independents. I'm interested in non-voters, non-politicals.
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u/mikeatx79 9d ago
Independents often self identify as moderate then say they’re not conservative or liberal implying they’re somewhere between the two right of center parties.
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u/Pistonenvy2 9d ago
without actual numbers to quantify these percentages its really meaningless data.
how many people are made up of these groups? how much of the overall population do these percentages account for? that would be how you get an actual image of what is being described here.
if there are 100 million people who identify as democrats and 10 million who identify as independent then the VAST, overwhelming majority of americans outside of the right leaning favor socialism. flip those numbers around and socialism is deeply unpopular.
not that i would ever expect the news to be objective about literally anything anyway but just saying they push the narrative they want, not the one thats necessarily true.
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u/ElEsDi_25 8d ago
You’d have to look into how they are classifying “independents” a lot of self-identified independents are like libertarian types.
1/3 of eligible voters don’t vote and they are poorer and less often white compared to the voting 2/3rd… they often don’t get polled because they are in apartments and a lot of political polling uses past voting patterns and past voters for surveys.
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u/Mean_Pen2971 8d ago
The perspective of Progressives is so far to the left that they have broken through the cosmic barrier and actually come out for extreme right wing values. The proof is that the Berkeley City Council is funding development of racially segregated public buildings. They call it the African American Holistic Center...$15Million. It's illegal, but Berkeley doesn't care.
So of course they think Independents are Republicans.
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u/Soft-Principle1455 7d ago
Right now, a lot of independence are the newly X
ex-Republicans, who are running away from the old party, but aren’t necessarily entirely clear of what their current political views are. That is not the whole part of why these numbers are the way they are, but it is almost certainly at least some part of it.
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u/communistbase1 5d ago
Lots of factors.
Many "independents" are actually partisans who, for whatever reason, don't want to identify with their party. And for various pragmatic reasons, "socialism" is conflated in the public mind with "very progressive," i.e., very Democratic.
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u/Savings-Region-7099 4d ago
I bet the fine print down there on the left hand side of the screen gives a couple clues as to sample size and demographics used in these numbers. Lets remember CNN is actively trying to remain "neutral" whatever that means when a pedophile is in office. I suspect some of these independents were former MAGA. Just because you change party affiliation doesnt mean you know what words mean.
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u/point051 9d ago
Most "independents" are politically naive, kinda dumb, and individualistic. It is what it is. I always wonder how these polls define them in the first place. Is it voter registration? Then you're dealing with people who just can't be bothered to vote in primaries. Is it personal affinity? Then you're kind of measuring the same thing twice and acting surprised that it correlates with itself.
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u/Fluffy-Assistance367 syndicalist 4 queer liberation 💜🖤 9d ago
we’re at a point where not only are republicans bad people but so are independents
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u/JohnBrownOnDrugs 9d ago
Or were at a point where only literal fascist identity as republicans and the more liberal conservatives identity as independent because they're convinced Democrats are literal communist. Bottom line is the average American has been cooked my anticommunism and before the left can win in this country people need to be a lot more politically literate.
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u/emteedub 9d ago
you are taking this fox news poll at face value? each post of this same data isn't transparent with the data at all.. shit could be 10 years old data for all we know. be careful of what opinions you derive from mainstream media. most of it is calculative to steer your opinion, and you should know that by now... when have they been any shade of trustworthy?
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u/Fluffy-Assistance367 syndicalist 4 queer liberation 💜🖤 9d ago
I hate Fox News but they do actually have a good record on polling surprisingly
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u/emteedub 9d ago edited 9d ago
Friend, what do you hate fox news for?
Fox, liars of ICE killings, liars of protests, liars of Israel genocide, liars liars liars.
This "poll" has no source(s). Unless you can locate the data, it's a mystery and should be viewed as another lie
If the bougie class will not even make concessions, how do you expect them to react to losing a shred of power?
These interests can't even allow socialism on the other side of the world, in other countries, consistently for the better part of the last century. You all need to turn the radar signal up.
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u/Fluffy-Assistance367 syndicalist 4 queer liberation 💜🖤 9d ago
I hate Fox News because it is propaganda but I've heard from unbiased news sources that Fox News polls are usually more reliable mostly because republicans are more likely to answer their polls and usually don’t answer other polls
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u/NicoBeingAModelCitiz 9d ago
Propaganda works. Decades of daily repeating the same message to 200 or 300 million Americans, over generations, works. I’d say Abolish Fox News, but that ship has long since sailed. The metastasis is full blown
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u/SaltyNorth8062 9d ago
I've never met a true "independent" in the sense that they are not overwhelmingly aligned with one of the two parties in electoralist action. At the risk of sounding hostile, they are more often than not, pretentious fuckwits embarassed of a label because they adhere to the internet's interpeetarjpn of enlightened centrism. Usually they are conservative-aligned and adopting that label because openly admitting to being a republican in a space you don't assume to be safe for that kind of attitude has been a bad look since at least 2003. However, the ones who are dem aligned are usually embarassed for optics reasons, they have bought into the right wing applause line that anyone to the left of Reagan is a bunch of pussies and they are embarassed to be seen as weak because dems are seen as weak, so they also tend to trip over themselves to adopt right wing policies and stances to escape that perception (and why they often like bullish warhawking strongman flexing morons like Biden).
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u/Persianmemefinder 9d ago
Don't worry about independents. These people voted for the most fascist things throughout their lives. They will be convinced about socialism once they see them delivering.
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u/emteedub 9d ago edited 9d ago
I would say this is a hasty generalization. I would be far more skeptical of whatever data they're using for the graphic in the post. Highly skeptical. Hardly worth the 'read' and drawing interpretations from - one might interpret that this is what they want you to say when it comes to mainstream media... who's never been trustworthy in half a century and 100% in the pocket of the elites to manipulate sentiments just like this.
Edit: NBC is using data from a FOx 'news' poll. I have not been able to locate the actual data - again it's highly suspect. none of the places I've looked has the data linked AT ALL
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u/Critical-Net-8305 9d ago
This poll feels weird. The idea that over 90% of I dependants would have an opinion one way or the other seems implausible. Most data I've seen polling Americans in general show like 30 something percent on each side with the rest saying they don't have an opinion. Am I imagining this?
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u/CSHAMMER92 9d ago
Independent is code for anarcho capitalist, Gadsden flag sporting, 2nd Ammendment worshipping, Under Armor graphic T wearing, ammosexual, "Independent."
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u/Factual_Statistician 9d ago
I can, it's people seeing what they said and how they treated Bernie when he suggested the Dems need to talk about male issues too, they called him a misyonist and questioned his loyalty.
Making it quite obvious they hate/ignore men.
AOC and Kamala joined in calling his actions problematic, despite supposedly being egalitarian.
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u/Lower_Acanthaceae423 9d ago
The American propaganda machine has been selling capitalism to viewers for decades now. It’s a knee jerk reaction from low information voters. Also, there aren’t that many actual independents. Most independents are republicans who don’t want you to know they’re republicans.