In the wake of a series of electoral and primary victories in deep blue cities by politicians who profess to be socialist, many are wondering how voters in the country with the foremost free enterprise economy in the world are voting for political candidates who espouse anti-capitalist wealth redistribution policies that have a track record of deepening corruption and spreading poverty.

Earlier this month, Washington, D.C. city councilmember and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member Janeese Lewis George easily defeated Democrat Kenyan McDuffie in the mayoral primary, virtually assuring her victory as D.C. mayor in November. This followed fellow DSA member Nithya Raman’s victory in the Los Angeles mayoral primary, who will face incumbent Mayor Karen Bass in a runoff in November.

Last week added more socialists to the list of primary victors, as democratic socialists swept three primary races in New York, including Darializa Avila Chevalier for the state’s 13th congressional district (who has said, among other highly controversial things, that she is “fighting for the eradication of Western Civilization”) and DSA member Claire Valdez. Yesterday, yet another democratic socialist won Colorado’s primary for its 1st Congressional District, as Melat Kiros defeated Diana DeGette, who has been in Congress for almost three decades.

All of this follows the election of avowed socialist Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City last November, along with Katie Wilson for mayor of Seattle.

Exit polls indicate that young voters under the age of 30 are the primary drivers of the socialist victories. In the NYC mayoral race, Mamdani won “78% of voters under 30 and 66% of those ages 30 to 44.” These results line up with recent polls indicating that over half of Americans under 30 say that socialism is “beneficial.”

So why are more and more young Americans putting their faith in socialism at the ballot box? Some insiders say a large part of the appeal toward socialist policies is their promise of government intervention in an economy marked by a high cost of living. “People are feeling like they have to work way harder to get by, and meanwhile they’re seeing Elon Musk become the first trillionaire in the world,” stated national DSA co-chair Ashik Siddique. “The Trump administration is just administering policies that make people’s lives worse, and many people feel like the Democratic Party establishment is not really putting up a fight.”

Further analysis indicates that inflation, rapidly increasing housing prices, and rising health care and child care costs are pushing younger and blue collar voters toward embracing socialist policies like rent freezes, guaranteed federal jobs, and universal health care, all of which are foundational DSA policies.

Young socialists like Asad Dandia, described by Vox as a “public historian from Brooklyn,” say they are economically “stuck.” “DSA largely comprises young people — people in their 20s and 30s — who are for the most part college-educated and renters,” he said. “I’m including myself in this category. We don’t have access to the resources and the wealth and the necessities for us to achieve the American dream. We get stuck with being perennial renters. We’d like to advance in life, just like everyone else has, and we haven’t had the opportunity to do so because of these gaping inequalities.”

These are the issues that seem to be driving many young urbanites in deep blue cities to vote for candidates backed by the DSA, but underneath the surface lies a much more extreme agenda than merely wealth redistribution. As noted by National Review’s John Fund, the DSA issued an updated platform earlier this month that “calls for abolishing the U.S. Senate, defunding the Pentagon, offering universal amnesty to illegal immigrants, transferring the ownership of major corporations to the public, and replacing ‘the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.’ It also includes a demand that police budgets be cut ‘annually to zero.’”

So which countries do the DSA uphold as socialist paradises that the U.S. should aspire to? Cuba appears to be one. Fund observes that the DSA issued a statement last month lambasting the U.S. for committing acts of “imperialism” against the country, ending with the words “Long live the Cuban Revolution.” Meanwhile, the Cuban regime, which has maintained a government-controlled socialist economy for over six decades, currently oversees a country where 89% of families suffer from extreme poverty, with a per capita income that is below $1.90 a day.

But as the recent success of American socialist politicians illustrates, an increasingly substantial amount of young progressives today can’t be bothered with the miserable track record of socialism. They just want the government to help them make ends meet, even if it means embracing wealth redistribution and abandoning the free enterprise principles that have made America the most prosperous nation on earth.

It appears that both traditional Democrats and Republicans will need to do a better job of coming up with bold and creative solutions to address the economic concerns of so many young people. As Fund emphasizes, liberals have failed to “govern America’s cities effectively or efficiently,” and Republicans “have also dismally failed to promote their own solutions to urban problems. The result is that socialism, which had never really taken root in America, is now in danger of becoming the secular religion of many voters — especially disillusioned young people.”