When the last KELO-TV/Emerson College poll showed Governor Larry Rhoden trouncing Aberdeen loudmouth Toby Doeden in the gubernaotrial runoff, flip-flopping Doeden dismissed the poll results by suggesting Emerson somehow mistakenly assumed high turnout:
“You can poll anybody you want,” Doeden said Wednesday. “The people we’re polling, Dan, are the people we know are showing up in a low-turnout runoff. We’re going to win” [Dan Santella, “Rhoden Calls Poll ‘Encouraging’, Doeden Rates It ‘Absurd’,” KELO-TV, updated 2026.07.16].
But in a splendidly detailed analysis of early voting and voter registration during the Doeden/Rhoden gubernatorial runoff (which culminates with final votes tomorrow!), Bob Mercer finds strong turnout in early voting:
As of July 13 — two weeks before the July 28 Republican runoff election — county auditors had reported providing 13,927 absentee ballots to people registered as Republican voters for the runoff and receiving back 12,598 of those ballots.
By comparison, for the June 2 primary elections, county auditors had reported providing 26,654 absentee ballots to people registered as Republican voters for the primary and receiving back 26,125 of those ballots.
Those absentee numbers reflect reports county auditors make weekly to the South Dakota Secretary of State office. County auditors could update those reports prior to the July 28 runoff [Bob Mercer, “A Surge of New Republicans Eligible to Vote in Runoff,” KELO-TV, 2026.07.24].
July 13, the only reporting date so far for runoff early voting, was the 21st business day since early voting opened on June 12. 12,598 ballots received over 21 business days puts early Republican runoff voting at a pace of 601 ballots per day.
May 15 was the 21st business day of early voting during the primary. At that point, county auditors reported receiving 9,312 ballots, a pace of 443 ballots received per business day.
But that May figure includes Democrats, independents, and other non-elephantine voters casting ballots in municipal races. Republicans cast 80.5% of the early ballots in the June 2 primary. Apply that proportion to the votes received by May 15, and we can guess that Republicans had submitted 7,496 early votes by the 21st business day of primary early voting, or 357 early ballots per business day.
Those figures suggest that, two thirds of the way through the early voting period, Republican turnout for the runoff was 68% higher than it was for the primary.
During the primary, voters submitted 2.5 times as many ballots during the last couple weeks of early voting as they did during the first four weeks. If runoff participation and last-weeks acceleration match the primary, county auditors may get over 31,000 more early runoff ballots. By the end of early voting today, early runoff ballots could reach nearly 44,000, almost 18,000 more early votes than Republicans cast in the primary.
And if early-voting enthusiasm favors Larry Rhoden, the Governor stands to enjoy exactly the stunning turnaround from his wimpy second-place primary finish that the Emerson College poll suggested and crush loudmouth Toby Doeden.