A new leftward shift in the US?

This study seeks to explore the reasons why democratic socialists in the United States havegained traction among voters, and why right/center voters potentially could support such apolitician. To explore this further, we adopted a multiple case study where we have analyzedthe successes of Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani. Priorresearch led us to formulate three hypotheses, which in turn gave us the means to perform apattern-matching analysis. The theoretically hypothesized and expected patterns during a risein elections of democratic socialists are: (1) an economic downturn that includes: rising livingcosts, wage gaps, wage stagnation etc; (2) broken election promises that include politicians notfollowing through on their promises, not making substantial changes, and where public trust ishollowed out; (3) regular citizens’ concerns not being addressed. The expected pattern furtherholds that democratic socialists address regular citizens’ concerns and worries, making themelectable. Our findings indicate that all three of our expected patterns are confirmed with theempirical patterns we observed in our data and material. Deep economic distress, combinedwith a lack of public trust in the status quo, made the costs of switching from right to left morejustifiable. This has led to the rise in democratic socialists because they caught the distrustfulvoters by aligning with the people, primarily in economic policy change and better living costs,but also in concerns of the regular citizens.