While I was looking at the Libertarian voter registration figures, it struck me that their one Legislative candidate doesn’t even come from the Libertarians’ strongest district.
Libertarian Tracey Quint is running for House in District 11, a chunk of western Sioux Falls between 12th Street and 57th Street, running west from I-29 to a stairstep border along Sertoma Avenue in the north, Grinnell Avenue in the middle, and Ellis Road in the south. By the Secretary of State’s latest data, Quint is one of 86 registered Libertarians in that part of Sioux Falls. The 2,804 Libertarians statewide average out to 80 Libertarians in each of the 35 Legislative districts, so District 11 has six more Libertarians than we’d expect to find with an even distribution across districts.
Of course, voter totals vary across districts, from 12,778 in District 26, which sprawls across Brule, Buffalo, Hughes, Hyde, Jones, Lyman, Mellette, and Todd counties in south central South Dakota, to 29,015* in District 35, which encompasses eastern Rapid City and Box Elder. The average district voter count is 17,687. District 11 is 5.2% below that average, with 16,768 registered voters.
So, more Libs, fewer voters… the Libertarian Party really is punching above its weight among District 11 voters. Libertarians constitute 0.51% of the District 11, versus 0.45% of the statewide electorate.
Six more thousandths of the electorate than average—not quite a District 11 t-shirt slogan, but the difference is there.
However, there are ten districts that have more Libertarians, in number and electorate percentage, than District 11. Three are in Sioux Falls—10, 12, and 15. The other seven encompass the Black Hills, Districts 29 through 35. The hottest beds of Libertarianism appear to be District 35, with 0.81% of its voters registered as Libertarians, and District 32, Rapid City’s downtown and north side, where Libertarians make up 0.80% of the voter roll.
I’m glad the Libertarians got one of their members to run for Legislature. But given these figures, it seems they could have found one or two more candidates from their Sioux Falls members and a whole handful from their hardy Black Hills compatriots.
You can see voter registration numbers for each District on the SOS website; below is my table of the percentages of the electorate each party has among registered voters in each district:
*The 29,015 voters registered in District 35 are nearly 7,000 more than the next-highest district voter totals, found in District 31 (Lawrence County) and District 30 (south Rapid City, southwest Pennington County, and Custer and Fall River counties). The gap is so big, I have to figure that Secretary of State Monae Johnson still hasn’t gotten around to purging all the non-resident RV voters who have registered to vote via America’s Mailbox at 514 America’s Way in Box Elder.