A plurality of Democrats want their party to go further to the left on healthcare issues, according to a New York Times/Siena poll released Thursday.
Of Democratic voters surveyed, 45% said they want prospective candidates in their party to move farther left on healthcare in order to win in the 2028 presidential election. Meanwhile, 26% of Democratic supporters said they want the Democratic candidate to not move either direction and 27% want the candidate to move more toward the center.
“While I think the Democrats are going in the right direction with their, like, ‘Medicare for all’ plans and everything, I would want to see that go further,” Jacob LeClaire, a 29-year-old Democrat in Humble, Texas, said, the NYT reported. LeClaire cited Democratic New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani as an example, according to the outlet.
The poll also found that 52% of potential supporters of the Democratic Party thought it needs to move to the center “in general,” while 18% said the party should not move either direction and 25% said it should shift farther left.
The poll’s release comes as Democrats have been searching for an effective healthcare messaging strategy ahead of November’s midterm elections. The Searchlight Institute, a Democratic think tank, is calling for Democrats to embrace a new health policy that would provide free primary care for all Americans, NBC News first reported on May 15.
Rising healthcare costs have emerged as a key issue across the nation ahead of the midterms.
Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, previously vowed to “create a new corps of outreach workers to support New Yorkers navigating the healthcare system,” according to a mayoral platform on his campaign website. He also pledged to “reject Medicare Advantage, and reject higher copays for inservice workers and instead “partner with retirees, workers and their unions to take on the fragmented, for-profit healthcare system and lower costs for everyone,” per his campaign website.
Mamdani’s administration has backed a cost-cutting effort that would allow city employee’s prescription drug data to be shared with an outside health insurance administrator, sparking privacy concerns among public sector unions, Politico reported in March.
The poll showed that just under half (49%) of Democratic voters surveyed had a very or somewhat favorable view of socialism, with 15% indicating they had a very favorable view and 34% saying they had a somewhat favorable view. Meanwhile, only 8% had a very unfavorable view.
The New York Times/Siena survey was conducted among 1,507 registered U.S. voters across the nation from May 11 to 15. Among those surveyed, 784 respondents were identified as potential Democratic voters.
The poll’s margin of sampling error among registered U.S. voters was roughly plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.
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