…but city turnout remains below 2006–2018 levels.
The 2025 Legislature passed House Bill 1130 on the premise that combining municipal and school elections with the statewide primary or general elections would increase voter participation in local contests. Whether combining elections this year drove more participation in the municipal election in Sioux Falls is unclear.
Sioux Falls votes for mayor and two at-large city council seats every four years, in even-numbered non-Presidential election years. Sioux Falls votes for one at-large council seat during Presidential election years. Sioux Falls usually held those elections in April. The mayoral elections have regularly drawn more than twice as many voters as the lone council seat elections, so I’m going to compare the 2026 vote for mayor and two council seats only with past mayoral elections, back to 2006.
Participation in the Sioux Falls mayor’s race during Tuesday’s combined election was definitely up from the April 2022 election: this year’s mayoral candidates got valid ballots from 28.9% of the Sioux Falls electorate, compared to 24.3% participation four years ago.
But participation in the at-large council seat votes was relatively unchanged. At-large council seat A drew 21.7% participation this year versus 21.5% in 2022. At-large seat B drew 20.7% this year versus 20.8% in 2022.
Participation on the city’s charter amendments improved this year, but not as much as in the mayoral race. Five amendments on this year’s ballot drew on average the checkmarking attention of 25.5% of Sioux Falls voters, right in between the higher mayoral and lower council participation rates. In 2022, average participation on two amendments was 23.1%.
So comparing this first combined election with the last separate municipal vote, we see that voter participation increased in the mayoral race and on ballot measures but remained the same in the apparently less interesting at-large council races.
But participation in the Sioux Falls mayoral-year municipal election this year was still the second-lowest in the last six such elections. In 2006, 2010, 2014, and 2018, more than 30% of Sioux Falls voters cast valid ballots for mayor. Council votes have always underperformed mayoral votes, but in all four of those elections council turnout averaged better than 25%, notably better than this year’s and 2022’s 21%.
Amendments don’t happen as regularly, so it’s hard to make strong comparisons, but in 2010 (the only other year in this survey besides 2022 and 2026 when a mayoral/two-at-large ballot included charter amendments), voter participation on three amendments averaged 28.0%, better than this year’s 25.5%.
There are a lot more local elections to tabulate and compare to determine what impact combining elections may have had on voter participation. We also need to test HB 1130’s effect in municipalities that combine their elections with the November general, where the effect may be more pronounced.
But in Sioux Falls (where the city nicely compiles its past election results for easy calculations! thank you!), combining the municipal election with the statewide primary coincided with an increase in participation in the mayoral vote, a slighter increase in participation on amendment votes, and no clear increase in at-large city council votes compared to the last election. However, turnout in Sioux Falls remained below the participation in comparable elections from 2006 through 2018.