You've probably seen the name popping up in your feed or heard a friend mention the "socialist candidate" who wasn't Bernie Sanders. Claudia de la Cruz, running under the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), became a bit of a lightning rod during the 2024 cycle. People kept asking: where are the claudia de la cruz polls? Why isn't she showing up on the major networks?
Honestly, the answer is kind of a mess of ballot access laws and how pollsters choose who to call.
When we look back at the actual numbers, de la Cruz ended up with roughly 167,772 votes nationally. That’s about 0.11% of the total popular vote. Now, that might sound like a tiny drop in a massive bucket—and in terms of the Electoral College, it was—but there's a weirdly significant historical footnote here. That 167k figure is actually the highest vote count for an explicitly socialist ticket since Norman Thomas ran back in 1936.
It’s a strange reality where you can "lose" by a landslide but still break a nearly 90-year-old record for your specific political niche.
The Reality of Claudia de la Cruz Polls and Ballot Struggles
Polling for third-party candidates is notoriously difficult. Most major pollsters like Quinnipiac or YouGov often won't even include a candidate's name unless they are on the ballot in enough states to theoretically win the presidency. De la Cruz and her running mate, Karina Garcia, managed to get on the ballot in 19 states, including big ones like California (where she ran on the Peace and Freedom Party line) and Florida.
But here’s the kicker: they were disqualified in Pennsylvania and Georgia.
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Those are the states where the "spoiler" anxiety hits the roof. Because she wasn't on the ballot in every swing state, many national claudia de la cruz polls simply didn't exist or lumped her into "Other." If a pollster doesn't read your name over the phone, you aren't getting a percentage point.
In California, she pulled in about 0.4% of the vote. In New Mexico, she got 2,442 votes. These aren't world-shaking numbers, but for a campaign that called for a 90% cut to the military budget and the nationalization of the 100 largest corporations, the fact that they nearly doubled the PSL's 2020 performance is what her supporters are clinging to.
Why the Polling Data Felt Invisible
Most people checking for claudia de la cruz polls during the height of the campaign were met with a wall of silence. It wasn't necessarily a conspiracy, though her supporters certainly felt the "media blackout" was intentional. It was mostly a technicality of the "likely voter" model.
Pollsters usually screen for people who have voted in the last two elections. Since a lot of de la Cruz's base consisted of young, first-time voters or people who feel totally alienated from the Democratic and Republican parties, they often didn't even make it past the first screening question of a standard political poll.
Basically, if the pollster thinks you won't show up, they don't care who you like.
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The "Spoiler" Effect and Swing State Math
There was a lot of drama in states like Georgia. Democrats actually fought to keep her off the ballot there, fearing she would siphon off just enough progressive votes to hand the state to the GOP. On the flip side, you had Republicans occasionally intervening to keep her on the ballot for that exact same reason.
Politics is funny like that.
In the end, she didn't "spoil" anything in the way Ralph Nader was accused of doing in 2000. The margins in the 2024 election were such that 0.11% wasn't the deciding factor in the swing states where she was actually an option. But the campaign argues that the "poll-ability" of a candidate isn't the point. For them, it was about building a "mass political organization" outside the two-party system.
What the 2024 Results Actually Prove
If you're looking at the data to see if a socialist revolution is coming next Tuesday, the numbers say... probably not. But the jump from 2020 to 2024 is real.
- 2020 PSL Results: Roughly 85,000 votes.
- 2024 PSL Results: 167,772 votes.
That is a 100% increase in four years. Whether that's because of her specific platform or just a general "none of the above" vibe from the American public is still being debated by pundits. Honestly, it’s probably a bit of both. People are frustrated.
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What's clear is that the traditional ways we measure "success" in politics—Electoral College votes, prime-time debate slots, 5% polling thresholds—don't really apply here. De la Cruz wasn't trying to win the White House in a literal sense; she was using the ballot line as a megaphone.
If you want to keep track of this movement going forward, stop looking at national horse-race polls. They won't tell you anything. Instead, watch the local ballot access petitions and the growth of the PSL's internal membership. That's where the actual data lives.
Moving forward, the smartest move for anyone interested in third-party politics is to look at the state-by-state certification reports rather than the "Other" category in a CNN poll. Those certified numbers represent real people who hopped over the hurdles of a two-party system to cast a protest vote, and that's a data point that isn't going away.
Check your local Secretary of State website for the granular breakdown of the "Independent" or "Third Party" counts in your specific county to see how these margins are shifting on a local level. That's where you'll find the most accurate picture of how candidates like de la Cruz are actually performing on the ground.