Why Democrats say they like socialism more than capitalism

If you turned on the TV or radio in the closing weeks of the 2020 presidential election cycle, odds are decent that you heard the word "socialism" being used in ads over and over. Credited as part of Republicans' winning message with Cuban-American voters in south Florida, for instance, the debate over socialism has become louder in the United States in the decade and a half since the financial crisis.

Republicans have sounded the alarm about growing government, feeling more confident deploying the term in negative messaging about their opponents. Meanwhile, Democrats have engaged in their own internal struggle about how to navigate supposedly growing interest in socialism among younger progressives. In the last few years, polls have shown that Democrats are more apt to give socialism a favorable nod than they are capitalism. What's going on here?

Cards on the table up front: I am not a fan of socialism. My early interest in politics came from learning about Cold War history, and it is hard to study the Soviet Union and come away thinking a centrally-planned economy with strong government authority managing most arenas of life is a good idea. I have been moved by the incredible writing of Vaclav Havel, who has written movingly about the importance of liberty for human flourishing and his experience as a dissident in Czechoslovakia during its socialist era. To me, socialism brings to mind grey concrete bloc housing, oppressive sameness, the erasure of individuality and creativity, economic stagnation.

However, I also understand that my definition of socialism is not the same definition that many of my friends and peers use when they speak about the term. Where I think of Soviets, they may think of Sweden. And though I would argue that IKEA and Volvo are not brought to you by socialism, it is clear Americans are not all operating off of the same definition of the term.

This week, there's fresh Gallup data out helping to unpack some of this.

Since 2010, Gallup has tracked Americans' attitudes about socialism and capitalism. And since then, capitalism has been viewed by around six-in-ten Americans, while socialism is only viewed positively by about four-in-ten. Free enterprise, meanwhile, is viewed much more positively than capitalism, with fully 84 percent of Americans holding a positive view.

The overall trendlines have been extremely consistent, barely any movement in over a decade. And under the surface, views on capitalism have stayed stable between Republicans and Democrats, with about seven in ten Republicans and just over half of Democrats saying they think positively of the term. Yes, there are differences but truly these days a twenty point gap between the parties isn't that large.

However, the partisan gap on socialism is much wider and has grown in the last decade. In this week's new data, Gallup shows only 14 percent of Republicans holding a positive view of socialism. Meanwhile, two-thirds of Democrats do the same.

I admired Democratic Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy (representing my beloved hometown of Orlando) when she wrote about her own family's experiences with socialism a few years back, pushing back against what she viewed as her party's increasing comfort with socialism. And I shared her frustration with efforts to effectively water down what we think of as socialism. For Republicans and Democrats alike, that often means using the term to describe anything government does, whether to push back against a new regulation or to claim socialism really just means fire departments, public schools or basic infrastructure (things that are entirely consistent with also having a market economy!).

But even if political elites in both parties may derive benefits from "defining socialism down", voters in the two parties clearly interpret the word "socialism" in very different ways.

So often, when groups diverge in their view of a term or a concept, it is not merely because they are each making a different assessment about the same thing. Instead, each group effectively has its own definition of the term or concept at hand. We see this clearly in Pew data digging more deeply into American's views on the term "socialism". Those who oppose it name oppressive regimes and historical failures of the past (Soviet Union, etc) as examples of why. But those who support it are not defining socialism in those terms; to many supporters, "socialism" is merely a mostly-market economy that is heavily regulated and with a robust safety net.

This explains why Republicans hold very cut-and-dry negative views of socialism and positive views of capitalism, while Democrats hold somewhat positive views of both systems. Republicans view capitalism and socialism as opposites, while many Democrats view socialism as something that - in the words of the Pew study - 'builds upon and improves' capitalism. Republicans think of Venezuela, Democrats think of Denmark.

Democrats also think of Bernie Sanders. It can't be a coincidence that, over the last decade, many of the major spikes in Google searches for the term "socialism" have coincided with major Sanders moments, either in summer of 2016 around the Democratic National Convention or during the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination process. (Other spikes included former President Trump's State of the Union address in 2019, which focused on the subject.)

And while it would be generous to say Sen. Sanders is exclusively a "Denmark is great" variety of socialist (he's gotten into hot water for comments on Cuba's socialist regime and for taking what he called "a very strange honeymoon" to the Soviet Union shortly after getting married.), in my research it consistently seems clear that's the impression most young people have when they speak glowingly of Sanders.

When my Republican friends have expressed anxiety about young Americans' sympathy for socialism, I often remind them that there is not a majority coalition among young people for nationalizing industries and switching to a centrally-planned economy. (In qualitative research I've done, many young people think socialism just means people working together more, or a more robust social safety net with a little more taxation of the very wealthy.)

That doesn't mean people are thrilled with the current system, to be sure. Just a few years ago, the Harvard IOP youth poll asked young voters to rate socialism and capitalism, and while they gave capitalism a slightly better rating, the overall positivity was much lower than what you see in that Gallup data for the public overall. Barely half of young likely voters felt positively about capitalism. And for voters of all ages, the brand of "big business" has taken a big hit, with Gallup showing only 46 percent of Americans - including barely half of Republicans - feeling positively about the term, a low-water mark for the eleven years Gallup has been tracking it.

But when interpreting polling about what Americans say they like, it is valuable to keep in mind that not every person defines terms in the same way - especially a term like "socialism".

***

Thanks again for being a reader of Codebook. Why do you think there is such a big divide in the polling around socialism? Hop to the comments to start the discussion.

If you enjoyed this post, please share Codebook with a friend or colleague!

Come say hello on: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram

You can also catch my weekly radio show, "The Trendline", on SiriusXM P.O.T.U.S. Channel 124 airing Saturdays at 10 AM Eastern.

(Cover Photo Credit: Busa Photography/Getty Images)