Skip to content

SD Dems Need 16 Counties, 66,160 Voters to Match GOP

Secretary of State Shantel Krebs provides a nifty little map showing voter registration totals by county around the state. Secretary Krebs even thoughtfully colors in each county to show which party has the largest number of registered voters:

Voter registration totals by county March 2015
(Click for interactive map!)

 

Pink is for GOP pre-eminence; pale grey is for Dem pluralities. On the interactive map, rolling the pointer over a county renders the county name illegible, but Team Krebs makes up for that design flaw by reprinting the county name over the summary of party affiliations in-county to the right (as shown above in the screen cap of Roberts County data).

The Republicans have pluralities in 49 out of 66 counties, including the fourteen counties with the most registered voters (which themselves encompass 69% of the electorate). Only three counties without large American Indian populations—Clay, Miner, and Aurora—enjoy Democratic numerical supremacy.

Statewide, Republicans make up 46.1% of the electorate; Democrats make up 33.5%; Independents constitute 16.5%. There are 66,160 more South Dakota Republicans than South Dakota Democrats.

If I were sitting in the big chair at South Dakota Democratic Party headquarters, I’d post two numbers over my desk: 16 and 66,160. Those are the numbers of counties and voters, respectively, we’d need to grab to reach parity with the GOP. The county count would be easier to grab: the sixteen counties with the lowest GOP numerical advantage over Dems could be tinted blue by registering just 5,383 more Democrats. Coloring counties blue would be more feather in the cap than election tilter. Eating into the 39,145 GOP voter advantage in Lawrence, Meade, Pennington, Lincoln, and Minnehaha counties would go much further in advancing Democratic fortunes in statewide races and multiple legislative districts that in urban liberal heaven ought to be blue.

16. 66,160. Post them over the desk like President Roslin’s survivor count. But unlike the President’s whiteboard tally on Colonial One, we want to see those numbers drop. Let’s register some Dems!

12 Comments

  1. leslie

    click on interactive map: huge promo glamor photo of SOS covers 1/2 of screen-pppplllleeeeaaaasssseeee

    1st day on the job and the most important priority of GOP SOS is big self promoting photo of her mug. irrelevant!

  2. leslie

    hb 1048 and 1064 had NO discussion and passed both GOP houses and daugaard is expected to sign these laws that will effect EB5, but nobody is saying a word, much like GEOD’s faux investigation(s) so rounds, dauugard, jackley, regents, nsu, ect ect ect are now in the clear.

    seems like we need some more counties and voters on the democrat side, otherwise–SECRET LEGISLATION RULES THE DAY IN SD. wonder if chris christie runs NJ that way?

    wow, just wow. no democracy in SD not subject to GOP GROSS MANIPULATION AND SUBTERFUGE

  3. leslie

    rachel maddow took 4 months since the election to figure out how repubs cleaned our clock, see youtube 3.4.15 “REPUBLICAN PROJECT REDMAP”

    strategy, strategy, strategy. next election it will be different feints. money, money, money.

  4. leslie

    mercer blog re: hb 1048; 1064

  5. Um… link, Leslie? 1064? What did Mercer say that bears on this topic?

  6. leslie

    rachel referred to the rslc-repub state leadership comm.

    congrats on new format-touchy! :)

    can’t link w/ this laptop. would simplify life so much.

    see mercers pure politics blog to the right, click, go to ethics article which lays out 1064 and 1048 in aberdeen news.

    or see mercer twitter. bears?…see my 2/3 para above. mercer is outraged and this wouldn’t happen if we had 16 counties, 66k voters. PAY ATTENTION SDP, SDDP

    sneaky republicans

  7. Roger Cornelius

    leslie,

    The South Dakota Secretary of State website looks like an online adult dating service.

  8. leslie

    hahaha we are paying for it too

  9. Ah, the AAN article. I’ve got to get my head out of my stylesheets and read that! Thanks, Leslie!

  10. jerry

    Wow, I thought that there were more republicans in the state. If the Independents would come on board in a close election, Democrats would win the day. So what does it take to make us tick? It seems like just going to the polls would do the trick.

  11. jerry

    We only have one at large representative here so the gerrymandering is non existent at the national level. We do have those areas though for our local senators and representatives so that presents a problem in Pierre. But if you look at county levels for national seats, there is really not that much difference when you consider the Independents. The trick is to get people to vote and that is a hard thing to convey when your liberty has been taken away by the legislature. The republican loves them rights they say, but when there is an initiative vote, they ignore it. That is not democracy.

Comments are closed.