How many current U.S. state legislators are DSA members or endorsed by DSA chapters?
Executive summary
There is no single, verifiable tally in the provided reporting that lists exactly how many current U.S. state legislators are DSA members or were endorsed by DSA chapters; major public sources report related totals for “elected officeholders” that mix federal, state, and local offices and offer differing snapshots over time [1] [2]. Combining those sources yields an evidence-backed conclusion: the Democratic Socialists of America counts and outside aggregators place DSA-affiliated or DSA-endorsed officeholders in the low hundreds overall, but the subset who are specifically state legislators cannot be precisely enumerated from the supplied materials [1] [3] [2].
1. What the sources actually track versus what’s being asked
Most sources cited track “DSA members or endorsees holding elected office” as a broad category—covering municipal, county, state, and federal posts—rather than publishing a clean, current list restricted to state legislatures alone, so the reported headline numbers (for example, a Wikipedia-derived list of 204 public officeholders and internal DSA claims of roughly 207 members in office) cannot be read as a definitive count of state legislators only [1]. Ballotpedia and the DSA’s own materials emphasize endorsements and officeholder lists but likewise aggregate across levels, and they’re updated at different cadences, meaning temporal mismatches complicate any precise crosswalk to “current state legislators” [2] [4].
2. The published ranges and snapshots the reporting offers
Publicly visible snapshots from the sources place DSA-affiliated elected officials in the low- to mid-hundreds at various moments: Wikipedia’s list has recorded around 204 individuals who are DSA members or endorsed by DSA chapters (across all office levels) and cites DSA claims of approximately 207 members holding elected office in an August 2023 snapshot [1]. Other reporting traces growth at earlier inflection points—Talking Points Memo documented a wave of DSA members winning state legislative seats in the 2018–2020 cycle and noted that multiple states had two or more DSA state legislators in early 2021—evidence that DSA’s state legislative presence increased substantially after 2018 but without yielding a contemporaneous, comprehensive tally in the supplied files [3].
3. State-level examples that are verifiable in the reporting
Several sources provide verifiable, state-specific counts illustrating the organization’s footprint: New York’s “Socialists in Office” bloc and NYC-DSA endorsements are repeatedly documented, with reporting identifying a slate of at least six DSA-endorsed or DSA-member legislators in New York’s state Senate and Assembly and additional recent wins like Kristen González and Sarahana Shrestha [5] [6] [7]. These concrete, localized tallies underscore that state legislative representation exists and can be documented at the chapter level, but they also demonstrate why a national, up‑to‑date figure requires aggregation of many chapter lists and cross-checking beyond the material provided here [5] [6].
4. Why a precise national count is not possible from these sources
The DSA’s own reporting and external aggregators differ on scope and timing: DSA sometimes reports “members in office” including city and county officials [1] [4], Wikipedia aggregates endorsements and memberships without isolating state legislative seats reliably across updates [1], and watchdogs or media outlets focus on specific cycles or geographies [3] [5]. Additionally, endorsements come from either national or local chapters and may be withdrawn or retained unevenly (noted in high-profile cases such as the national DSA withdrawing an endorsement while a local chapter kept it) — factors that further complicate a static national count of state legislators identified as DSA members or DSA-endorsed [8] [9].
5. Bottom line and recommended next step for a definitive answer
Based on the supplied reporting, the best-supported statement is that DSA counts and public aggregators show DSA-affiliated or DSA-endorsed elected officials numbering in the low hundreds across all levels of government [1] [2], with documented pockets of state legislative representation (for example, multiple seats in New York) that are verifiable at the chapter level [5] [6]. To produce a definitive, current count specifically of U.S. state legislators would require combining up‑to‑date chapter endorsement lists, the national DSA endorsement database, and state legislative rosters—material not present in the provided sources—so this reporting must stop short of a precise national number [4] [2].