Last updated on 2017-09-17
…but at least we’re less polarized!
Sioux Falls lawyer and lobbyist Justin Smith tweeted this graphic showing relative partisan polarization of state legislatures in 2015:
National study finds South Dakota's legislature one of the least polarized of all state legislatures: https://t.co/IF1AXpk0H5 pic.twitter.com/6zvhIZRk6g
— Justin G. Smith (@justingsmith) September 17, 2017
South Dakota’s Republican-dominated Legislature not polarized? How does that compute? Does the absence of an effective opposition pole mean we don’t count as polarized?
I check the source, Measuring American Legislatures, a blog maintained by political science professor Boris Shor of the University of Houston and politics and public affairs professor Nolan McCarty of Princeton. As Shor explained when he and McCarty first released their data in 2014, polarization is “the average ideological distance between the median Democrat and Republican in the state legislature.”
In their 2011 paper “The Ideological Mapping of American Legislatures,” Shor and McCarty said South Dakota, Alaska, and Idaho anchored the conservative end of the political spectrum… and that was based on data from 2002. With the decline in Democratic legislators and voter registration, as well as the ouster of Democrats from all three of our seats in Washington, it seems safe to contend that South Dakota has not become more liberal in either the 2002 data or the 2011 Shor/McCarty paper.
Shor and McCarty also used South Dakota to illustrate the wide variety in ideological medians among states:
One of our most striking findings is the tremendous variation in polarization across states. This manifests itself in the variance of party medians and the extent of overlap of party distributions within states. There is also a large amount of overlap among the party medians across states. For example, the Democratic party in Mississippi is more conservative than the relatively liberal Republican parties of Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island. The liberal Republicans of New York locate to the left of relatively conservative Democratic parties in Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia. Despite the historical decentralization of the American party system, it is surprising that this much overlap remains [Boris Shor and Nolan McCarty, “The Ideological Mapping of American Legislatures,” American Political Science Review, August 2011, 105:3, p. 537].
South Dakota Democrats, more conservative than New York Republicans—there’s your lack of polarization in South Dakota. Contrary to the SDGOP spin blog’s persistent efforts to foment fears that liberal extremists have taken over the South Dakota Democratic Party, South Dakota Democrats have run so far past the center to the right that Professors Shor and McCarty see less difference between them and South Dakota’s extreme right-wing Republicans than they see between the Democrats and Republicans in most other state legislatures.
Dems, listen to your track coach: Run hard, turn left!
Cory… remember that conversation we had about my struggle about leaving the party and the fact that it can’t be fixed from the inside…. well this article perfectly illustrates my point.
13, pelase elaborate for those not in on the conversation: are you saying that the best route to electoral success for true liberals in South Dakota is to abandon the Democratic Party and form their own party?
It’s not the field office that’s the problem. That’s the best thing to happen in decades. The problem is that in SD, Democrats are Republican light. There’s no fixing that.
Cory … True liberals don’t need a new party. The path is to ostracize Republicans so much for their corruption, greed and selfishness that many level-thinking GOP voters throw up their hands in disgust of both parties. Then they re-register as NA (non-affiliated) in protest. Candidates would then find the NA’s as a pool of proper potential voters capable of voting person not platform.
*CO has an equal split of the three parties. R – D and NA
PS … The chart above shows what I just stated. It has CO as the most polarized but doesn’t include the unaffiliated moderate voters in the center.
The chart shows that Colorado voters are electing very liberal democrats and very conservative GOP Party members to the legislature. Those level headed NA voters aren’t drawing legislative candidates to the center in Colorado.
Republicans hold a huge party registration advantage in SD and in most legislative districts. The NA’s and independents as a whole also lean slightly right in our state. The answer for a Democrat isn’t to run extreme left so as to avoid being “Republican light.” Nancy Pelosi is not getting elected here.
Democrats should stick to their principles which are generally moderate and main stream, favor the middle class and underprivileged, and value diversity and social programs. On the other hand in South Dakota, there are numerous Republicans that are really Democrats on the issues, but they have to run as Republicans to get elected because of the registration disadvantage of the Democrats. These are Democrats in Republican clothing. Rather than Democrats being Republican light (or is it lite?), Democrats are masquerading as Republicans.
Another part of the answer is also to do a better job of messaging on Democratic ideas and issues. Republicans hold a stranglehold on every decision made in state government and they have instituted all the regressive policies that have led us to be a state with low wages and low educational investments in danger of being left behind by the 21st century economy. An example of this is the stark contrast between South Dakota and Minnesota. If you judged Minnesota based upon the Republican doctrines of low taxes on the wealthy, low investments in education, and minimal social services, you would predict that Minnesota’s economy should be faltering. Instead the “People’s Republic” is prospering and government coffers are overflowing. Where are the stream of businesses that were predicted to flow from Minnesota to South Dakota? South Dakota could only dream of being in the running for the Amazon corporate headquarters or for major high-tech industry.
It turns out that businesses value many things more highly than simply the low taxes and low wages which South Dakota touts. It turns out if a state is willing to make investments in education, infrastructure, job training, parks and recreation and social services, companies and entrepreneurs greatly value these things way over and above relatively lower taxation.
If the South Dakota/Minnesota comparison doesn’t convince you, look at Minnesota versus Kansas, or to a lesser extent, Wisconsin. Kansas was the poster child for Republican trickle down economics and tax cuts to spur growth. They cut taxes on the wealthy, but the economy didn’t grow and their state budget turned to a sea of red. Oopsy! Wisconsin has done a lighter version of the Kansas plan and experienced similar results.
One more answer is also of course to hold the Republicans accountable for their many failures to run our state with integrity. Why has it taken so long to investigate clear instances of corruption? Why was so little effort made to uncover the truth?
Darin, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. Introducing facts into political discussion? I don’t believe we are ready for that. What shall we do with all the bumper sticker slogans?
Darin, I’m not convinced Nancy Pelosi is as extreme left as the local rhetoric portrays her as, any more than I’m as extreme left as they say I am. I like what you say about Democratic principles being moderate, common sense principles. They’ve been that way for a long time. But Republicans control our branding, and our Democrats feel compelled to get out from under that renbranding by pretending they are Republicans instead of making exactly the moderate case you call for.
Maybe when I tell Democrats to run hard and turn left, I’m really redirecting them back from their over-compensating rightward tilt to come back to the center that they, too have abandoned. The center looks left when you’ve been hanging out in crazy GOP right-land for so many years. We need to reorient everyone’s view of the spectrum to see how far out to the right (radical social conservatism, retrogressive and economically counterproductive discrimination, radical invasions of personal privacy, radical to the point of near anarchy deregulation and privatization) they’ve been dragged.
Nancy Pelosi retiring would be one the best things to happen in a long time for the SD Dem party. Pelosi represents everything that is wrong in national politics today (corruption, lobbyists) and I guarantee SDDP registration numbers would stop falling.
It’s more about name recognition negativity than anything else.
Remember Noem’s Nancy Pelosi campaign strategy in 2010? ‘A vote for Herseth is a vote for Herseth’.
That stuck in people’s heads and it worked brilliantly.
A vote for Pelosi is a vote for Herseth (I meant to write).
It’s 1:00 am, too late for me. I meant “a vote for Herseth is a vote for Pelosi” and I believe that single strategy won the election for Noem.
I’m surprised South Dakotans will think that much about a national political figure whom they’ve never met. But the ability of the GOP to stir xenophobia of all flavors has shown results.
The SDGOP will demonize whoever is in charge of our party—Pelosi, Obama, Keith Ellison, Al Franken. The next time the GOP tries that, I’d like to see our guys counterprogram by bringing the Democratic leader here for lots of press and campaign events. Let that national Dem press some flesh in the state and talk about how the real values of the Democratic Party are in South Dakota’s interest far more than the Trump/Republican anarcho-capitalism.
jenny, nancy has our back.
13, involved in RC and statewide, I don’t see it. sour grapes, eh? perfection?
Darin, I hope you are involved locally.
so you three voted for HRC, right? Or are you responsible for electing our current president?
lets pull together as dems, progressives, independents and rats jumping the republican ship. lets win some seats locally, statewide and nationally, 2018.