The South Dakota Democratic Party’s new executive director, Stacey Burnette, put in her first day at the office yesterday…. which reminds me that I haven’t checked voter registration figures for awhile.
Luckily, our new exec has 2,620 more registered Democratic voters from whom to recruit candidates and donors than the party had one year ago. Unfortunately, all of that growth happened in the run-up to the 2018 election. Since then, we’ve hovered just below 159,000 registered Democrats.
Unluckily for Dem fortunes, both the Republicans and the independent rolls have swelled by three and a half times as many voters. 9,143 South Dakotans have signed up to be Republicans, and another 9,450 have declared themselves independents since last August. Growth in both of those categories has continued throughout this year.
The Libertarians are growing, too, up 186 since August 2018.
By percentages, over one year, Democrats have grown 1.7%, Republicans 3.6%, independents 7.7%, and Libertarians 10.6%.
Republicans continue to constitute just a hair over 47% of the South Dakota electorate. Democrats have dropped steadily to 28.6%, while independents have risen to 23.8%.
Republicans are the top party in all counties except Buffalo, Clay, Corson, Day, Dewey, Marshall, Moody, Oglala Lakota, Roberts, Todd, and Ziebach. In those Democratic counties, the Republicans are behind independents only in Oglala Lakota and Todd. Democrats are third behind the GOP and independents in ten counties: Brookings, Butte, Custer, Fall River, Jones, Lawrence, Lincoln, Meade, Pennington, and Union.
Well, at least being executive director of the South Dakota Democratic Party requires actual work.
………..sigh………..
Let’s see if the new exec and her team are out working the Sioux Empire Fair raising that registered vote tally by 100 a day….
Don’t you think its a lot more honest to say that rolls swelled because Bernie Sanders got people excited? How else would you explain twice as many delegates driving to Pierre than ever before? And looking at the number of new independents and libertarians, we don’t have to wonder where they went after he got screwed out of the nomination by the DNC, HRC, and corporate controlled media. Many of the Sanders supporters I know left the party for good and some of them won’t vote for a Democrat ever again. I think they could brought back for Bernie, but not unless the people who have a liberal voice actually try to reach out to them instead of ignore them, shame them, and dismiss them and their concern for actual policy and authenticity over marketing and how well a person can tow the party line.
Amen, PaulT!!!
PaulT, do you have any support for that other than your opinion? Is there anything factual you can help us out with? Numbers? Polls?
I believe the number of Democrats in SD was shrinking and the Independent count growing prior to 2016. I’d like to know.
BTW PaulT, my guess about the Independents is that they don’t want to be GOP, but to avoid harassment from their neighbors, they went with Independent rather than Democratic.
Either way, I think the Independents ought to be a prime target for the SDDP.
Not hard to figure out why the Democrats are losing out. I did not leave the Democrats they left me. You can not be successful party running on destruction and hate.
Work with Trump not against him
In the 2016 presidential campaign Bernie remained an Independent, as a Democrat I felt no obligation to vote for someone that wasn’t a member of the party.
Sam2 is in the bag again. Working with trump is what farmers are doing this very day. Go watch them prepare for the farm sale.
Democrats are wining man! They are becoming Independents!