Members of the Democratic Socialists of America have staged electoral coups this summer, unseating several high-profile incumbents in Congress. The party counts New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Washington, D.C., mayoral hopeful Janeese Lewis George among its members.While the DSA projects public unity, the organization is a web of interlocking and sometimes competing internal caucuses. The DSA does not publish caucus membership figures. Yet, its caucuses play an outsize role in filling leadership positions, forming policy platforms, and resolving debates at its national conventions.Here are six of the most prominent caucuses shaping the DSA’s political ascent.
Groundwork and Socialist Majority Caucus: The electoral pragmatists
The Groundwork and Socialist Majority Caucuses topped the ballot at the DSA’s 2025 convention in Chicago. The caucuses captured 19.6% and 16.6% of the first-rank vote share, respectively, for the National Political Committee, the DSA’s most important leadership body.Both caucuses believe that socialists can use the Democratic Party for electoral gain, even if they disagree with its political positions.“Starting a third party with its own ballot line from scratch has not been a viable strategy in the United States for a century, and it is not a viable strategy in the current moment,” the Socialist Majority Caucus’s platform reads. The caucus began in 2019.Groundwork describes the need to “continue to struggle against the capitalist Democratic Party,” even as it sees value in using Democratic primaries to “cleave the bourgeois/managerial elite of the Democratic Party from its working-class base.” Groundwork was founded in 2023.Four Socialist Majority Caucus and five Groundwork members sit on the DSA’s National Political Committee. Ashik Siddique, a Groundwork member, serves as one of the DSA’s two national co-chairs.
