Between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal” and Bernie Sanders‘ “Medicare-for-All,” we hear a lot about the supposed newfound popularity of socialism in the United States today. But a new poll released Monday shows that only a very small minority of Americans favor such a system.
A Monmouth University poll titled “SOCIALISM vs. CAPITALISM” showed that only ten percent of Americans view socialism favorably. Just as interesting, 57 percent of Americans said they believed socialism was incompatible with American values with only 29 believing the opposite.
NATIONAL POLL: Views of –#SOCIALISM: 10% positive / 42% negative / 45% neutral
CAPITALISM: 39% positive / 17% negative / 40% neutral29% of public hold positive view of capitalism AND negative view of socialism
30% of public hold neutral views of bothhttps://t.co/G2ROm1amsw— MonmouthPoll (@MonmouthPoll) May 6, 2019
The Monmouth poll notes:
Taken together, Americans divide into two dominant camps – 29% who have a positive view of capitalism and a negative view of socialism and 30% who have neutral opinions of both capitalism and socialism. The remaining 4-in-10 Americans hold a range of mixed views on the two economic systems.
The poll also found that 58 percent of Americans approved of the idea of “universal” health care, with 53 percent believing that it wasn’t necessarily socialist.
This indicates that while Americans overwhelmingly reject socialism as a term, they might embrace aspects of it if it’s not considered socialist.
“We may be in a period of flux with how these economic systems are viewed,” Monmouth’s Patrick Murray said. “Socialism still carries a stigma, but many Americans feel they are being left behind by the current capitalist system. Policies that have traditionally been seen as socialist may be getting more popular even if the term itself is not.”
New Monmouth University poll:
-Only 10% of Americans have a positive view of socialism
-57% believe socialism is incompatible with American values
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) May 6, 2019
“We shouldn’t ignore the possibility that ‘neutral’ could be a way for some Americans, especially Democrats, to couch their policy preferences without using a term that has historically negative connotations,” he added. “This is going to be a real challenge for left-leaning candidates in the 2020 presidential race.”
“The party base seems to be saying,” Murray continued. ‘We like your platform, just don’t use the word socialism to describe it.”
Given these recent poll numbers, that’s probably some good advice for the Democrats as we head into the 2020 election.