Horry County is not a place where the word “socialism” gets a warm reception. In November 2024, roughly 70 percent of local voters — 141,374 of them — cast ballots for Donald Trump, while just under 62,000 backed Kamala Harris, out of 267,402 registered voters and a turnout north of 77 percent. Nearly three-quarters of Republican voters here pulled the straight-party lever. In contrast, a recent survey indicates that Democrats Now View Socialism Favorably.
So a national polling number showing that 66 percent of Democrats hold a positive view of socialism can read, from a porch in Surfside or a shop in Conway, like a dispatch from another country.
But it isn’t. It’s a dispatch from a political party that just watched a self-described democratic socialist take the oath of office in the nation’s largest city — and that number, and what sits underneath it, is worth understanding rather than dismissing. Because the forces driving it are not exotic. They are the same forces that dominate every county council meeting and every kitchen-table argument along the Grand Strand: what things cost, who can afford to live here, and whether the people running the show are working for you.
Democrats Now View Socialism Favorably: A Shift in American Politics
What the Numbers Actually Say
The finding comes from Gallup’s August 2025 survey of 1,094 adults nationwide, with a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points [Gallup, 2025]. Among Democrats, 66 percent rated socialism positively, while only 42 percent said the same of capitalism — a 24-point gap, and the widest Gallup has recorded. Democrats have rated socialism above capitalism in every reading since 2016.
The rest of the country did not follow. Republicans view capitalism positively by 74 percent to 14 percent. Independents lean the same direction, 51 percent to 38 percent. Nationally, socialism has been remarkably static: 39 percent positive, 57 percent negative, essentially unchanged for years.
What actually moved was capitalism. Positive views slipped to 54 percent, down from 60 percent in 2021 and the lowest Gallup has ever measured. Independents dropped eight points. Democrats dropped eight points, falling below half for the first time.
And here is the finding almost nobody wrote a headline about: Americans rated small business positively at 95 percent and free enterprise at 81 percent, while big business sat at 37 percent positive and 62 percent negative — a nine-point fall in a single year, on top of a six-point drop in 2021 [Gallup, 2025]. Democrats gave big business a 17 percent positive rating. Independents gave it 36 percent. Even Republicans, at 60 percent, are well down from 78 percent in 2019.
That combination is the real story. Americans are not souring on markets. They are souring on scale.
The Word Is Doing a Lot of Work
Before anyone panics or celebrates, it’s worth asking what respondents think they’re endorsing — because Gallup’s question doesn’t tell them. It asks only for a positive or negative impression of a word.
When Gallup did ask people to define socialism, the answers scattered. About 24 percent described it as some form of equality. Only 17 percent gave the textbook definition — government ownership of the means of production — down from 34 percent when the same question was asked in 1949. Others described government-provided benefits and services, a softened version of communism, or simply people getting along [Gallup, 2018].
That definitional drift cuts both ways, and honest coverage should say so. Critics argue the word has been laundered into a wish list of pleasant goals with the actual mechanism — state control of the economy — quietly deleted, and they point to a century of results to make the case [American Experiment, 2025]. Supporters and even some skeptical analysts counter that young Americans saying “socialism” are usually asking for health coverage, housing they can afford, and institutions that answer to them — not the abolition of private property [AEI, 2026].
Both can be true at once. A word that means five different things to five different voters is a poor guide to what those voters will actually do in office. Which is why the more useful question is not what people say to pollsters, but what happens when they win.
New York Answered That Question
In November 2025, Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayor’s race, defeating former Governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa on a platform of freezing rents, launching city-owned grocery stores, and making buses free. On New Year’s Day 2026, Senator Bernie Sanders swore him in, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez delivered opening remarks, and Mamdani told the crowd he was elected as a democratic socialist and would govern as one.
He has not moderated. In June 2026, three candidates he endorsed won Democratic congressional primaries in New York City, two of them beating incumbents. Mamdani told ABC News he believes a democratic socialist can be elected anywhere in the country, for any office [ABC News, 2026]. He has simultaneously insisted that Wall Street and private investment are welcome, framing democratic socialism as a return to the party’s New Deal roots — while continuing to push higher taxes on the city’s wealthiest residents [Fox News, 2026].
Not everyone in his party is buying it. Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey said flatly that he doesn’t consider Mamdani a Democrat, accusing the socialist wing of trying to hijack the party [Fox News, 2026]. Critics also point to the Citizens Budget Commission’s finding that New York’s share of the nation’s millionaires fell from 12.7 percent in 2010 to 8.7 percent in 2022, arguing that people and capital move when taxed [PJ Newsletter, 2026]. That is a live empirical dispute, not a settled fact — but it is the dispute Democrats are now having in public.
The Engine Underneath: Affordability
Strip the labels away and one thing is driving all of it. Mamdani’s own pitch was not about ownership of industry. It was that working people can’t cover rent, groceries, and child care no matter how many hours they put in [ABC News, 2026].
A Cato Institute survey in 2025 found 62 percent of adults under 30 held a favorable view of socialism, and that 67 percent of Democrats did — while 59 percent of all respondents still viewed capitalism favorably [Cato Institute, 2025]. Gallup’s data shows the same generational split: as Fox Business summarized the September 2025 release, just 31 percent of Democrats under 50 now view capitalism positively, down from 54 percent in 2010.
This is not a philosophy seminar. It is a bill that won’t stop growing.
Why This Lands Here
Which brings it home — because Horry County is not immune to the arithmetic, it’s just experiencing it differently.
Our economy runs on tourism, hospitality, construction, and retail. Those are the industries that have historically paid least and offered the thinnest benefits. Meanwhile the median home sale price in Myrtle Beach over the three months ending May 2026 was about $266,000, with houses averaging 118 days on the market [Redfin, 2026]. The market has cooled — inventory is up sharply and prices have flattened — but that median still sits well above what a year-round service wage supports without a second earner or a second job.
Layer on the migration story. Buyers keep arriving from New York, New Jersey, and the Northeast seeking lower costs and lower taxes [Living in Myrtle Beach, 2025]. Some of them left cities now governed by exactly the politics this article describes. Others will bring those politics with them. Both things happen at once, and both change the electorate.
And then there’s the Gallup finding that should give local officials the most pause. Americans still love small business — 95 percent positive. What collapsed was confidence in big institutions. In a county where residents routinely fight over developer entitlements, short-term rental rules, hospitality-fee spending, and who really benefits from public investment, that distrust isn’t imported. It’s homegrown, and it’s bipartisan.
The Bottom Line
Sixty-six percent of Democrats rating socialism favorably is a real number from a credible pollster, and it deserves to be taken seriously rather than waved off as a coastal-elite quirk. But it is also a number about a word — a word that means state ownership to some and a doctor’s visit they can afford to others.
The durable finding underneath it is harder to spin and harder to ignore: Americans across every party have lost faith in large institutions while keeping faith in the small ones they can see. That is not a left-wing sentiment or a right-wing sentiment. In Horry County, it’s the same instinct that fills a council chamber when a rezoning request shows up on the agenda.
The parties are offering very different answers to that discontent. Voters here will get their turn to weigh in soon enough.
What do you think — is the affordability squeeze a bigger threat to this county than any ideology? Sound off in the comments.
Further Reading
Democrats Now View Socialism Favorably Gallup: “Image of Capitalism Slips to 54% in U.S.” (Sept. 8, 2025) — the source poll, with full partisan breakdowns and survey methodology: https://news.gallup.com/poll/694835/image-capitalism-slips.aspx
Democrats Now View Socialism Favorably Gallup: “The Meaning of ‘Socialism’ to Americans Today” — what respondents actually say the word means: https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/243362/meaning-socialism-americans-today.aspx
Democrats Now View Socialism Favorably Gallup: “Deconstructing Americans’ Views of Socialism, Capitalism” — how the definition has shifted since 1949: https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/358178/deconstructing-americans-views-socialism-capitalism.aspx
Democrats Now View Socialism Favorably AEI: “Capitalism Isn’t the Enemy — What Young Voters Really Want” — a market-friendly reading of the generational shift: https://www.aei.org/op-eds/capitalism-isnt-the-enemy-what-young-voters-really-want/
Democrats Now View Socialism Favorably American Experiment: “What Is Socialism?” — the critical case that the term has been redefined beyond recognition: https://www.americanexperiment.org/what-is-socialism/
Democrats Now View Socialism Favorably NBC News: Mamdani sworn in as New York City mayor — https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/zohran-mamdani-sworn-new-york-city-mayor-rcna247683
Democrats Now View Socialism Favorably ABC News: Mamdani interview on democratic socialism’s national prospects — https://abcnews.com/Politics/mamdani-democratic-socialist-candidates-elected-country-position/story?id=134286609
WMBF News: “DATA: How Horry County voted in this year’s election” (Nov. 6, 2024) — local turnout and vote totals: https://www.wmbfnews.com/2024/11/06/data-how-horry-county-voted-this-years-election/
Redfin: Myrtle Beach housing market data — current median prices and days on market: https://www.redfin.com/city/12572/SC/Myrtle-Beach/housing-market
