Sixty-two percent. That's the share of Democrat voters who told pollsters they'd happily pull the lever for a self-described "democratic socialist." Only 11 percent said they wouldn't. The remaining 27 percent are "unsure" — which in political polling usually means "yes, but I don't want to say it out loud yet."

This isn't a fringe survey from some campus newsletter. It's Economist/YouGov.

The poll, conducted June 26-29 with 1,606 respondents and a margin of error of ±3.2 percent, asked Americans whether they'd vote for a "democratic socialist" candidate. The overall numbers were more reassuring — 45 percent of all respondents said no, 29 percent said yes, 26 percent unsure. But crack open the partisan breakdown and the picture gets vivid fast. Among self-described liberals, 73 percent said they'd support a democratic socialist. Among 2024 Kamala Harris voters, 64 percent. Among Trump voters? Five percent.

Then came the follow-up: which economic system do you prefer? Among Democrats, 34 percent chose socialism outright. Only 22 percent picked capitalism. And 58 percent of Democrats said they view socialism "favorably" overall.

As Breitbart's Hannah Knudsen reported, this polling lands at a moment when the Democratic Party is already leaning hard into its socialist wing. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani — an avowed democratic socialist — is now running the nation's largest city. That's not a hypothetical anymore. That's a payroll.

Sen. Rand Paul weighed in on the numbers. "But still alarming that a majority of people are voting for socialists," Paul said. He pointed to his book, The Case Against Socialism, and the real-world examples the poll respondents apparently haven't considered. "They don't understand the disaster that is Venezuela, the disaster that is Cuba," Paul said. "It's ignorance, but it is alarming."

Paul zeroed in on the ideological engine driving the numbers. "Equal outcome leads to a disaster," he said — a one-sentence summary of about four centuries of economic evidence.

The counterargument from the left is predictable: "democratic socialism" isn't the same as socialism. It's Scandinavia, not the Soviet Union. It's safety nets, not state control. But the poll didn't ask about Danish healthcare policy. It asked about socialism by name — and a majority of Democrats said they liked it. When 34 percent of your party actively prefers socialism to capitalism, you've moved past the Scandinavian branding exercise.

What makes this poll land differently is the calendar. It dropped on July 2nd. Two days before Independence Day. The holiday that celebrates the founding of a nation built on individual liberty, private property, and the revolutionary idea that government should be limited — not that it should own the means of production.

Republicans, for their part, weren't confused. Eighty-five percent said they wouldn't vote for a democratic socialist. Independents leaned the same direction — 40 percent said no, only 24 percent said yes.

So the center and the right agree on capitalism. The left agrees on socialism. And the word "democratic" in front of it is doing a lot of heavy lifting for a system that has a perfect record of making countries worse.

Happy Fourth of July. Fifty-eight percent of the other party isn't sure what we're celebrating.