The Party for Socialism and Liberation’s 2024 presidential ticket of Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia achieved notable results this year, becoming the highest-performing ticket in the party’s history and the strongest by any openly socialist candidate appearing on the ballot under a label identifying them as such since the 1936 election.
“The hard work of the thousands of people who powered this campaign has produced a historic result for the socialist movement — the highest vote total since 1936!” De la Cruz posted on X last Friday. “Over 166,000 people cast their ballots for the Vote Socialist campaign, using their vote to send a message that the people want a new system.”
De la Cruz suggested in her post that the ticket could have performed even more strongly if it had been granted the same access to debates and resources as the Republican and Democratic parties. She attributed the campaign’s notable performance to its rejection of “endless wars” and its focus on directly addressing the needs of working-class families on the campaign trail.
The De la Cruz-Garcia ticket appeared on 19 state ballots and had its vote totals tabulated as a recognized write-in option in 17 additional states, though it initially submitted paperwork for 20. Of those 19 states, the Party for Socialism and Liberation was explicitly listed as the ticket’s primary party affiliation in 13.
While certified totals for the 2024 election are still pending, most states have reported official results and begun producing write-in totals. According to Dave Liep of the U.S. Elections Atlas, the ticket is estimated to receive 171,335 votes based on available certified and uncertified data. Richard Winger of Ballot Access News suggested that the total could have been even higher, as several states—including Washington, D.C., Maine, and North Dakota—failed to tabulate or publish write-in votes, despite the ticket submitting a certificate of write-in candidacy for each ahead of the election. Winger added that it’s unlikely these vote totals will ever be known.
The campaign’s vote total surpasses the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s previous record, set by Gloria La Riva in 2020 with 85,685 votes. It is also the first time a party ticket has exceeded six digits in votes. This count considers the ticket’s combined performance across all ballot labels rather than only where it appeared under the Party for Socialism and Liberation name. However, even when considering only the 13 states where the ticket appeared exclusively under the party’s label, De la Cruz still nearly doubled La Riva’s total.
When compared to all historic candidates who explicitly used the term “Socialist” in their ballot label and were primarily associated with that specific socialist party in media coverage, De la Cruz and Garcia’s performance is the strongest since Norman Thomas garnered 187,971 votes as the Socialist Party of America nominee in 1936. The strongest-performing socialist presidential candidate associated with a socialist party on the ballot remains Eugene V. Debs, who received 914,191 votes in 1920 while also running as the Socialist Party of America nominee.
Based on preliminary(!) FEC data, Rachele Fruit (SWP) seems to have (thus far) gotten a literal handful fewer votes than James Harris did in 2012, while having access to one fewer electoral vote.
However, if you consider that the number of voters (and therefore also the number of votes/EV) has increased in the last twelve years, you could argue that she actually performed worse than Harris.
At any rate Fruit appears to have performed worse than Alyson Kennedy did 2020 with access to fewer EVs, and certainly performed much worse than Kennedy did in 2016 with access to more EVs.
Because the SWP is the only party with the word “socialist” in their name, that didn’t run on an explicitly antisemitic platform, and given that this election Israel and “palestine” were even more high-profile campaign issues among leftists than during previous elections, that may suggest that the modern American left are even more antisemitic than they are misandristic (which would not surprise me – but that also means I have confirmation bias).
Joseph Kishore (SEP) ran on antisemitism of the same scale as de la Cruz (PSL), Stein (GP) and West – i.e. more extreme than William Stodden (SPUSA) or Kamala Harris (DP). Looking at raw vote totals he appears to have done considerably better than he did in 2020, or than his running mate Jerome White did in 1996, 2008, 2012 and 2016.
However, that presents kind of a distorted view, because the SEP’s ballot access has changed dramatically over the years – unlike that of the SWP (considered above) which remained very similar, but like that of the PSL and SPUSA. You would really need to do a more in-depth analysis than I can be bothered to attempt, in order to obtain a proper comparison between this year’s and previous SEP, PSL and SPUSA candidates’ performances.
My guess is that they want to focus all of the money, in kind contributions, and time they can squeeze out of whoever they can squeeze them out of on one campaign, not spread them out over a bunch. They are a top down cult group marching in lockstep and want to keep very tight control of message, etc.
Jane McTrotsky can’t spend all her time and every penny she makes cleaning motel rooms above minimal survival on the presidential campaign if she’s running for Middleborough Canine Litter Size Regulator at the same time. Penelope Castro might start sporting a Hitler moustache on the campaign trail for Essex Clothing Button Regulator. Mildred Kim could accidentally forget her lines and offer an answer not fully in keeping with the 159th party 48 hour marathon meeting on ideological correctness during an interview, etc.
Without looking it up, how did, say, Rachel Fruit do in comparison with her party’s previous nominee(s), if any, and does the answer fit any hypotheses being offered?
@Richard Winger
Do you have any idea why they feel themselves too good to field candidates for “lower” offices than the presidency (cf. No Labels)?
—
@Curious
Hypothesis: ballot access, and the left’s antisemitism and misandry.
The only other campaigns that ran on a comparable level of explicitly antisemitic rhetoric, while also being on the ballot in more than a handful of states, were Stein’s and West’s. Stein is a “Jew”, if in name only; and West is a “man”, if in name only. Thus neither are acceptable to most of the modern American left, certainly not when an alternative is available in de la Cruz.
Why did PSL do so relatively well this year? I’ve seen one person suggest it’s because De La Cruz is a Latina, but so is La Riva. There were other parties with socialist in their name on the ballot in some states this year; did they also do much better than in the past? What were the other factors that might account for this?
PSL is unique in running vigorous presidential campaigns, but never running for other partisan office. If they did run for other office, that could help them to get qualified status. For instance, in Massachusetts this year, they petitioned for president. They were free to have added a US Senate candidate to that petition, but they didn’t. The US Senate race only had a Democrat and a Republican on the ballot. If the PSL had its own nominee for US Senate, he or she might have got 3% of the vote, and then PSL would have qualified status for 2026.