Young Democratic Socialists of America Is Growing Thanks to Trump and Mamdani

The Young Democratic Socialists of America, or YDSA — a campus organization of activists who support progressive candidates across the U.S. — has exploded in membership in recent months, according to students who run some of its chapters.

They attribute the growth to the reelection of President Donald Trump and the success of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist.

Interest in the Democratic Socialists of America, YDSA’s parent organization, has climbed steadily since Trump was elected for the first time and since Sen. Bernie Sanders, who was DSA-endorsed during his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, ran for president. The YDSA organization has grown from a dozen or so chapters in 2016 to more than 130 college chapters today.

Now its members argue that interest in their organization, which registers young voters and canvasses and campaigns for socialist candidates, means Democrats should be looking to tap into YDSA’s energy, as the party looks to the future and reckons with its leadership vacuum.

“The Democratic Party has been at best underwhelming nationwide,” said Malik Steward, the treasurer of Georgia State University’s YDSA. “That has resulted in people realizing there has to be some form of change. Especially for the Democratic Party, there has to be new voices.”

Young people are a crucial voting bloc for Democrats. CNN exit polls from last week’s elections found that 70% of voters ages 18 to 29 went for Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, while 69% went for Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey; 75% percent of New York City’s young electorate voted for Mamdani.

YDSA leaders are making the case that they’re part of a demographic that can fundamentally change election results. Look no further than Mamdani’s race, they say, at how he successfully changed not only voter turnout but the election’s voter base.

The day Mamdani, whose campaign did not respond to a request for comment, won the New York City mayoral election, the Democratic Socialists of America gained 5,000 members, according to a YDSA co-chair, Sara Almosawi.

“We’ve seen that young people change politics in such monumental ways in history,” Almosawi told NOTUS. Mamdani “aligned with the politics of a generation that has grown up throughout the financial crisis in 2008, the Iraq War, Trump and a genocide where we had students — our friends — being deported throughout all of this.”

But it isn’t just Mamdani who Almosawi thinks is responsible for the new interest in socialism. Almosawi attributes YDSA’s membership increases to the organization’s national “sanctuary campus” campaign, which pushes university administrators to increase protections for undocumented students. And, Almosawi says, students joined as a response to the violent treatment of college students who participated in pro-Palestinian campus encampments.

Those are issues that are especially salient under the second Trump administration, which cracked down on universities that had pro-Palestinian campus encampments, deported some protesters who were on student visas and conducted immigration arrests on college campuses.

“When Trump got elected, the club membership grew,” said Vito Abromaitis, the chair of the YDSA at Harper College in Illinois. “Indirectly, Trump has been causing liberals here to go further left.”

The Harper College chapter was founded three years ago, and once served primarily as a social space for its three consistent members. Abromaitis said that changed when Trump took office in January, when many students became interested in pushing back on his conservative policies. Now the chapter has more than 20 regular members.

Evan Caldwell, a national YDSA organizer, says membership at chapters across the country has increased by 47% since November 2024. The net increase comes to 833 new members, though another 754 more joined who have since graduated. These numbers only represent the members who pay dues, but Caldwell told NOTUS in an email that there are even more participants who volunteer.

In addition to pushing back on Trump, the groups also frequently lament about the state of the Democratic Party. Abromaitis said that of the students who joined Harper College’s YDSA in the past year, almost all of them were disappointed with Democrats and their decision to run former President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket in 2024.

The Democratic National Committee did not comment on the role of the youth vote on the 2025 elections.

YDSA is not the only growing movement for Democrats disenamored with the party. Tobin Stone, the deputy director of the Center for New Liberalism — a center-left effort that promotes moderate policies — said his group is also seeing an influx of new members.

The Center for New Liberalism started to see an uptick in young people joining last November, Stone said. Students founded chapters at schools in red and purple areas, including at the University of Alabama and the University of Arizona this year.

“There’s a lot of young people who are tired of the far left on campus, but want to find something outside of the typical Democratic establishment,” Stone said. “We know from plenty of polling that the average person in the country does not agree with [democratic socialist] ideas.”

Students at Florida State University founded a chapter of YDSA last year, but did not receive an official charter until the fall. Mamdani’s election has been a rallying point for the organization. Nieve Conroy, a co-chair of Florida State University’s YDSA chapter, said it’s “amazing” to have a well-known reference for the club’s philosophy.

“We’re all in this together, and this will only grow,” Conroy said. “The membership we have right now is so much more than I ever expected. And with the New York election, I genuinely think that our groups could make a national change.”