I feel like South Dakota should be a Democratic state. I see no reason for the state’s voters to prefer lunatics to sane politicians. The president doesn’t have the time or resources to seriously compete in the state, but it shouldn’t be necessary. Any South Dakotan can tell that Mitt Romney is a fraud.
President Obama has done more for the people of South Dakota than any president since Lyndon Johnson, and without starting a new land war in Asia.
Turn off the Fox News and get real. Obama deserves South Dakotans’ vote.
Boo – What – in 538’s analysis or anywhere else – leads you to conclude that SD should be an Obama state, other than factors (like preferring sanity to insanity, and relative economic prosperity to being on the losing side of a class war) that apply to every state?
Sure, the Great Plains had a populist movement, but that was a century ago. Our country is much more urban and much less agrarian than it was then, and except for the anachronistic (and bipartisan) Farm Bill, our policies and economy reflect that.
They have no reason to prefer Romney. None.
Aren’t they big on coal there?
NO, that’s Wyoming. ND has the oil boom, IA wind. We have not much of a boom in energy.
Ah, I figured it was Montana, SD, and Wyoming.
Just looked it up, it’s ND, MO, WY. SD isn’t even anywhere close. My mistake.
Who does? Besides the 1%. Even those stupid racists in Mississippi are better off materially with Obama. Which is a point Howard Dean tried to make before the MSM jumped all off the “Confederate flag” thing, denying that Confederate flags were on Southern pickup trucks. Funny, I’ve driven a lot in the South and I must have some kind of eye problem because I could swear I’ve seen more Confederate flags than US flags on pickups (and cars!) there.
Have you ever caught the “Yankee by birth; rebel by the Grace of God” license plates? The text is superimposed over a Confederate flag. Transplants “going native”.
No, thank God. But I have seen “don’t re-nig”. In Oklahoma.
You guys are the true biggots!!!
One g.
Tsk, tsk. Correct spelling is hateful.
As with so many other things, if one pre-excludes racism as an explainer, South Dakota voting is quite impossible to understand.
(shrug) Continue to be mystified. Enjoy it.
Just don’t EVER ask why racism continues to flourish. Your pretend-confusion is a microcosm of why.
I was going to say this in a much less oblique way.
SD is a really, really racist place. It mostly gets directed at Native Americans, but I’m sure it must carry over towards other non-whites.
I live in MN, and have come in contact with stories of what life is like for Natives in SD, and I honestly don’t think you would believe how bad it is. It’s truly horrific.
South and North Dakota would be Obama country, but they are both dominated by essentially anti-modernist local cultures. Don’t hold your breath on this one.
Fargo is a pretty nice place, I’ve lived there for a number of years (you just can’t afford to raise a family there) but you have a good point about anti-modernism. The old folks rather let young people leave then pay what it takes to keep them after school for example.
However I think North Dakota is more about anti-tax than anything else.
Doesn’t North Dakota still have their state bank?
Yeah, still do. The state is also getting about $1 billion a year in oil tax money that’s going into the state fund or to fix up schools and such.
Whoops meant to link this in the my other response.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/03/how-nation%E2%80%99s-only-state-owned-bank-became-envy-wall-
street
As a resident of South Dakota, I can’t disagree more. It is not a racist place. There are thousands of people here, and I know no racists. I live in Sioux Falls. We work with the Indians (and the use of this word is correct, as my good friend F R who is enrolled in one of the Dakota tribes has told me) and there is a lot of careful attention paid to them.
The Republican establishment that runs the state is not interested in the Indians. “They vote Democrat”. As a Democrat said, “If you ever did anything for them, that might change”.
Of course there are racists here, but the state IS NOT RACIST.
Yeah, according to everything I’ve ever read most tribes prefer to be called the name of their tribe and then indians over the other terms.
If you notice, South Dakota politics is dominated by who can sell out the cheapest to the banksters. They are almost as bad as Delaware in that respect.
Equally ridiculous. It’s standard republican politics.
And as far as the bankers go, there is a large banker who has contributed a lot of money (hundreds of millions of bucks) to Sioux Falls businesses and sport complexes. What does he get? A lot of resentment, is one thing.
Haven’t you heard of Tim Johnson? He’s the Democratic Senator from South Dakota who chairs the Banking Committee. He does what ever the banksters tell him to do.
Well, that’s as simplistic as the rest of the crap I hear from you. Tim does work with the banks, true. Banks provide thousands and thousands of jobs in SD, and lots of local and state money. Not working with the banks would be crazy.
Having him as chair is great. He is somewhat a bank senator – OF COURSE. Banks are important. But he is not totally in their corner.
Not totally? Just because he voted for Dodd-Frank?
OH, SNAP!
Don’t be ridiculous.
SD is a rural state, with one large city. The large city has 1/6 the population of the state, and most in the city come from the country. The large city (Sioux Falls) is slightly Democratic. Of the 6 state legislative districts, EXACTLY 1 is majority Dem (good gerimandering in the last cycle). The large city does not dominate the state, but the same dynamics are present here as in all rural states:
I don’t know why Nate doesn’t mention the big military base by Rapid City.
Military people vote absentee ballots in their state of record, usually the state where they first enlisted which is usually the state they grew up in which is quite often Southern. That’s why Republicans love military votes. Not because military personnel thirst for war, far from it, but because they grew up in Republican families.
This is why Democrats cede states with small numbers of electoral votes to Republicans. There are 17 states with 5 or fewer electoral votes. There are 15 states with 6 to 10 electoral votes.
South Dakota has a limited number of major cities and towns, is 500 miles by 200 miles and has a population approximately the size of a single Congressional District. The Democratic base in South Dakota includes all of the reservations.
Challenging politicians make bus tours through rural America. The Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas are neglected by most politicians. A brief trip through these states talking about farm policy would cause Republicans to worry and divert resources.
It’s time some of these scared white folks met their President.
As I recall, Obama visited a reservation or two in rural, eastern Montana in the last campaign, and it was very sucessful.
This time around, I agree–he doesn’t have the time or money to support forays into low population states. Ordinarily, I believe strongly in the 50 state policy, partly as a guard against voter suppression, election stealing, etc. in the handful of swing states.
IMO, Obama and Kaine dismantling the 50 state infrastructure that Howard Dean had put together was a serious mistake with ongoing long-term consequences. If there had been more in the way of local Dem presence in 2009-2010, I think the impact of the teaparty idiots might have been blunted — there just weren’t the local resources to deal with those town halls or with the local media coverage of them. Likewise, the fact that Dems are largely out of sight and out of mind in many of the redder areas of the country leaves open a fertile field for the reinforcement of the racism inherent to those areas. No one pushes back, and Obama is only perceived through the haze of Limbaugh/Fox propaganda.
An individual voter tends to have more clout in a low-population state than a large-population state numerically and because the social networks tend to be tighter. Three electoral votes are three electoral votes, and the President could likely cover most of the key places in South Dakota in a day or two. For example Breakfast in Aberdeen, followed by meeting Yankton Sioux, morning speech in Brookings, lunchtime speech Sioux Falls, stop in Pierre and meeting with Cheyenne River and Rosebud Sioux, stop in Sturgis, meeting with Pine Ridge Sioux, rally in Rapid City.
I find it hard to understand how that could be less productive the the umpteenth visit to a high-electoral-vote “battleground state”. There is a diminishing return on effort in going back over and over to the same states.
Are you telling me that the President can’t spend a week out in the Midwest? Do it earlier in the year, if you must. Montana, Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas. When is the last time a Democratic President visited any of those states?
(NY Times) – The FiveThirtyEight model currently has Mr. Romney as a 98 percent favorite to carry the state.
That is a 98% probability based on two polls which came in a 49%-43%. Nate Silver’s model assesses the fundamentals for South Dakota at 55%-37% and the expected vote at 55%-42%.
The problem with the model here is that it is based on too few polls to have any accuracy other than that provided the historical adjustments that Nate built in for evaluating each state.
There are 513 thousand registered voters in South Dakota, with a trend of voters reregistering as independents. Likely 175,000-200,00 votes wins those 3 electoral votes. Worst case, Obama is down 13 points, which is 26,000 votes. Could that size vote advantage be erased with one trip? Given the issues with the estimating model, it is hard to say.
And the data issue with small states is why they are so frequently written off.
Pretty much a lot of stereotypes in these comments.
SD is rural. That’s 75% of the politics right there.
SD has indians (that’s the right word according to the indian guy I work with, who is a professional indian – his job is liaision to tribal interests). That’s 10% of it.
SD is right-to-work.
However, here’s a wrinkle – since 2000, several really strong abortion bills have been defeated by popular referendum. Right now we have a referendum about a draconian education law – that has about 70% support to overturn the law.
In state government, the hill is steep. There are 35 state legislative districts. Of these, Dems are running in about 20. In the others (mostly West River – west of the MO river), Dems don’t run – what’s the point? Right now the Senate is 30 R, 5 D – we are trying to change that, but it is difficult. House is similar.
“Rural” is not explanatory of how South Dakota changed from voting for George McGovern to voting for John Thune. What besides the “Greatest Generation” (those with a memory of FDR) passing away changed?
I lived in the Dakotas in the 1970s and found South Dakota be particularly bigoted against the Indians they love to claim for tourism. (Does the City of Mission still operate the liquor store that is next to the city jail?) But folks tended to be liberal otherwise. When did that change?
I don’t live in Mission, so details of Mission geography are not my strong suit.
We work with Indians in my group. We do a lot with them. We have 20-30 people out in Rosebud, Pine Ridge, and several other reservations. We employ 5-6 within our SF headquarters, who specialize in cultural issues, to ensure that the disaster in AZ does not happen again (in which genetic samples from a tribe which were intended for diabetes projects were mis-used to draw a conclusion which was NOT part of the original informed consent, which is a huge issue in med research at this time). We are working right now on a big Indian-centric grant. And this is not the white-man’s burden either. We work with the tribes. We work with tribal IRBs (and they all have IRBs). We work with the IHS. We are partners, not patronizing white people.
Yes, some are prejudiced. But, no, the STATE is not filled with racists. You do not hear anti-indian statements routinely that I have heard, anywhere.
I’m not saying there’s no good people, doing good work. I’m glad you’re there doing what you do. More power to you.
There are places, though, where some of the most vicious racism I have ever heard of is the general rule, and is pervasive throughout the local power structure. The living conditions some places in Indian Country are terrifying: feral children surrounded by sexual predators and alchoholics and meth-heads, with no effective protection services at all. Maybe news of this doesn’t reach you in the city, but I have known survivors (and not-quite survivors) of this. Sexual assault of children runs 70-100% in some areas. And the white sheriffs and white judges put any Indian in jail they want, for trumped up charges of the flimsiest sort.
I’m glad there are good people in South Dakota, and I liked Rapid City just fine the brief time I was there. So I’m not saying it’s the whole state or everyone there, and I’m sorry I stepped on your toes by using careless language that painted with too broad a brush. I’m just saying, I have a hard time imagining a majority of South Dakotans voting for any non-white person for anything any time soon.
Reservations are autonomous places that govern rthemselves. There are a lot of izsues about who runs them. Tribes are sovereign entites. But im sure you know that.
One little known fact about SD -we had two senators who were both lebanese, one d,one r.
I live in South Dakota. My husband and his family go back several generations, and there are a lot of former journalists in the family. I live in what is arguably the most democratic town in the state (college town, surprise!), but…
South Dakotans are not ideological and I think that’s what Booman is getting at. It doesn’t always make sense that we are a red state, but I do think people just assume they are R b/c their parents were and their parents were. If you asked people about individual issues, many would discover they skewed far more democratic than they ever imagined.
Yes, our Dems tend to be Blue Dog, when we have them. Yes, there are some racist people in the state, but as Dataguy already said, SoDak is not a racist state. No more than any other state in the Midwest.
I’m really not sure why we always go republican in the presidential elections. We’ve had very few Dem governors (4?). I do wish that would change.