Democrats contested only 12 of South Dakota’s 35 Senate seats this year. 21 Republican candidates faced no challenger, and two faced (and beat) one independent opponent. Newly elected Senator Erik Muckey (D-15/Sioux Falls), one of only four Democrats in the entire state to win by more than 60%*, calls the Democratic Party’s fightless surrender of two-thirds of the Senate a “spectacular” failure:
There was real success on the docket, but we failed in one spectacular way: in 23 of our 35 Senate districts, voters didn’t have a Democrat to vote for at all. Nationally, about 15 percent of legislative seats went without a Democrat this year. Here, it was two out of every three Senate seats [Erik Muckey, blog post, The Muckey Minutes, 2026.11.11].
Democrats also left 35 House seats unchallenged, guaranteeing Republicans a majority in the 70-member House before a single vote was cast.
Two of the 12 Dems who ran for Senate and 10 of the 32 who ran for House won. Had Democrats challenged every Legislative seat and posted those success rates statewide, Democrats could have won (rounding up!) 6 Senate seats and 22 House seats.
The heartbreaker for Muckey is that the Democrats who did run for Senate came really close to quadrupling his caucus:
Unfortunately, the South Dakota Senate is a different story. Sen. Liz Larson and I will be the only two Democrats there.
That one stings because of how close we came. Aaron Matson lost District 11 by 35 votes. Joe Zweifel lost District 12 by 134. Celestine Stadnick, Jeff Shelton, Michael Calabrese and Shawn Bordeaux each came within 500 votes in Districts 27, 32, 34 and 26. Add those six races together, and you get 1,620 votes [Muckey, 2026.11.11].
1,622 votes, by my count, plus six more to break ties. That’s less than 4% of the 44,372 fewer voters who cast ballots in this midterm than participated in the 2022 midterm. If Democrats could have pushed statewide turnout from 49.37% to 49.63% and gotten those 1,628 additional voters to all vote Dem in the districts Muckey lists, Democrats would have eight seats in the Senate, their biggest delegation since 2015.
We can also point to two House squeakers: 144 more votes for Erin Ronayne Rudner in District 3, and 157 more for Amanda Potter in District 9—1.2% margins in each race—and we’d have two more House Democrats.
Here are all 12 of the Democratic Senate candidates with their margins by vote count and vote percentage:
| First Name | Last Name | District | Vote Margin | Vote Margin % |
| Liz | Larson | 10 | +1,810 | +25.27% |
| Erik | Muckey | 15 | +1,383 | +26.59% |
| Aaron | Matson | 11 | –35 | –0.42% |
| Joe | Zweifel | 12 | –134 | –1.70% |
| Celestine | Stadnick | 27 | –235 | –4.42% |
| Jeff | Shelton | 32 | –302 | –4.77% |
| Michael | Calabrese | 34 | –435 | –4.60% |
| Shawn | Bordeaux | 26 | –481 | –8.16% |
| Kay | Swihart | 18 | –1,190 | –15.30% |
| Christopher | Baumgartner | 33 | –2,979 | –30.17% |
| Dan | Andersson | 21 | –4,217 | –51.63% |
| Russell | Graeff | 19 | –4,427 | –55.85% |
If Muckey and Larson could somehow have donated their vote margins to other districts, they could have brought seven more Democrats with them to Pierre.
And for what it’s worth, Dan Andersson’s and Russell Graeff’s losses by over 4,000 votes and 50 percentage points are actually big improvements over all of their previous Senate tries.
In both Senate and House results, Muckey sees evidence of a stronger Democratic ground game:
…our organizing has gotten dramatically better in key districts across the state.That momentum is building fast, both in the number of field volunteers we have and in how many voters we’re reaching. You can see it in the results. Nine of our 12 Senate candidates ran ahead of Dan Ahler’s share of the vote in their own districts, and 15 of the 19 House Democrats who ran as the only Democrat in their race did, too. Those candidates spent months on doorsteps, and by Election Day, voters knew who they were. There’s no substitute for effective door-to-door campaigning in local races, where who shows up at your doorstep does matter [Muckey, 2026.11.11].
Now Dems need to knock on doors in every district.
*Senator Liz Larson held her District 10 seat with a 63% to 37% whooping of Republican Michael Dupic. Daylon Black Bull retained his position as Oglala County Sheriff by beating independent Derek Puckett 63% to 37%; Patsy Valandra beat independent Craig Lafferty 63% to 37% for the District 5 seat on the Todd County Commission.