Is socialism more than just a fad?

Thanks in large part to Zohran Mamdani's rise, new polls suggest that a majority of Americans no longer like capitalism.

- JONAH GOLDBERG COLUMNIST

ROY ROCHLIN Getty Images NEW YORK CITY mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani acknowledges the crowd at the 2025 Pride March in Manhattan.

HERE WE GO again. Socialism is making a comeback, according to friend and foe alike. A new NBC poll now suggests that a majority of registered voters don't like capitalism.

A Gallup poll in September also found that support for capitalism was slipping. A Data for Progress poll around the same time showed that — after asking some decidedly leading questions about democratic socialism — people liked democratic socialism. Still, Politico combined the results to declare: “Capitalism is out.... and socialism is in.” And just this week, an NPR podcast dedicated a segment to explaining “How socialism got sexy.”

This has happened before. In 2018, Gallup found for the first time that a majority of Democrats had a more favorable view of “socialism” than of “capitalism.” And we got similar headlines as a result. No doubt such polls partly explain why Democratic presidential primary candidates overwhelmingly ran in the Bernie Sanders lane in 2020. Joe Biden, the candidate who mostly avoided that lane, however, won the nomination.