A few weeks ago, the South Dakota senate race was looking kinda-sorta competitive, mainly because former Senator Larry Pressler was giving Republicans a place to put their vote if they didn’t like empty suit former Governor Mike Rounds. After a few million bucks poured into the race attacking Pressler (including money from Democrats), it’s looking like Republicans who were flirting with Pressler have come home to Rounds. (That graph is filtered to remove all “partisan” pollsters except PPP.) Weiland’s last ad is a pretty sad “I’m not Obama” effort. Rounds’ one scandal (explanation and links here) was given front-page play in South Dakota papers, and Weiland went at Rounds hammer and tongs, but at heart Rounds’ major flaw is his incompetence and low-level cronyism, and South Dakota voters have repeatedly shown that they will hold their noses and vote for a Republican with those traits.
Last time I posted about this race, there was some grumbling in the comments about Tom Daschle pushing Weiland into the race over Harry Reid’s supposedly preferred candidate, Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin. Perhaps that happened, but what’s more likely is that Herseth-Sandlin took a hard look at the race and realized that it’s not winnable. She and Tim Johnson are probably the last Democrats to hold federal office in that state for a long time. The population of these states is aging, and those old folks do two things: sit around and watch Fox News all day, and vote for Republicans like their lives depended on it.
Another factor in the shifting politics of the Dakotas is the Catholic Church’s obsession with abortion politics. This week, the North Dakota Supreme Court ruled in support of limiting chemical abortions in the state. This once again makes the work of the incredibly dedicated people at the state’s single clinic offering abortions (in Fargo) more difficult, which in turn makes the lives of the women they serve harder. Next week, North Dakotans will vote on a constitutional amendment that essentially says that constitutional protections begin at conception. The Dakota bishops apparently haven’t gotten Pope Francis’ memo that there are more important pastoral matters than protecting the rights of blobs of protoplasm, and hating gays.
Patricia Kayden
I would gather that the only people who remotely vote Democratic in the Dakatos are the Indigenous Americans. Not surprised that an overwhelmingly White state is so deeply red.
Wouldn’t a constitution amendment claiming that constitutional protections begin at conception be unconstitutional per Roe v. Wade? That should be an easy legal challenge.
Goblue72
White people cannot shuffle off this Earth fast enough.
kindness
Is it going to come down to a new Civil War here in the States? That’s what the TeaHaddists seem to be pushing. Hope not but I don’t have a whole lot of faith in the cooler heads of the right. Seems as far as they are concerned anyone who doesn’t share all their views is a traitor.
Scary times ahead and I don’t mean Halloween.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Patricia Kayden: The three whitest states in the country are Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, and they are not “deeply red” by any stretch. Two of them are flat-out reliable blue states…Maine, well, we’re still waiting for them to realize that they are, in fact, a blue state.
These three states also have the highest rate of atheism in the United States.
I think you can figure out what the problem is here. It ain’t white people.
Gin & Tonic
The population of these states is aging,
As of the 2010 Census, the median age in both ND and SD was below the median age of the US as a whole, and lower than MN, IA and MT.
japa21
Never thought SD was in play, even when it popped up a couple weeks ago as a possibility. Just like I never gave Davis much of a chance in TX. It is always great to have optimism, but not by disregarding reality.
Gin & Tonic
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Actually WV is in there between VT and NH.
scav
While the pale and stale could indeed be enjoyably watched into their rapturous sunset, I’m wary of a criteria that would toss most of Skandinavia and leave us with Israel. Can I have some more variables to play with? Finer grained tools?
Elizabelle
OT: Boo. “I Walked with a Zombie” on TCM now, about 20 mins. in. “Cat People” up next.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
The Dakotas never really were in play, but that said, idiots who keep trying to run from their party and Obama and go full-bore GOP-lite reap what they sow, as if doing so will actually save them against someone who is actually full bore GOP. Hint, assholes: The D by your name is already proof of guilt to most of these folks. Running from this shit rarely, if ever, works
scav
@Gin & Tonic: Median only goes so far, need to check out the full pop pyramids, broken out by race or at least pulling out the contributions of Native American pops on the age median (They still trend young If I remember all the data correctly).
Also, with the short term labor migrations (especially male, but also very much single or short-term) a number/chart pulled from one or even a few years might entirely miss the long term demographic trajectory and likely underlying mind-set. “Aging” is probably just a really bad, cheap and over-applied, word to really describe what might be going on.
Alex S.
I wouldn’t be THAT pessimistic, see, Heidi Heitkamp.
Steeplejack
Weird. For me, hat graph at the top doesn’t have any explanatory labels, just four colored lines. (Firefox, Windows 7.)
Gin & Tonic
@scav: I know all that. I was calling out mm for using a cheap, lazy assertion with no data to back it up.
If anything, I’d bet that with the Bakken labor ND will skew even way younger for the foreseeable future, although I don’t know if any of them will register to vote there.
Pee Cee
That might well be true, but not in the way these folks think.
scav
@Gin & Tonic: ah! So we both play for the same data-obsessed team! should have known.
constitutional mistermix
@Gin & Tonic: First look at this:
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/46000.html
Note that SD has more people under 18 than the national average, and more 65 and older. Why is that? Kids leaving the state after getting a good education, and Native Americans dying young.
Now look at this report on the growth of the over-65s:
http://www.citizing.org/data/projects/southdakota/SD%20population%20trends.pdf
The aging population in SD has been and is growing rapidly, which is why it’s continuing to tilt right.
constitutional mistermix
@Alex S.: 1/6 of the federal delegation from the Dakotas will be Democrats in 2015. In 2005, it was 5/6.
Gin & Tonic
@constitutional mistermix: Ah, data. Thank you.
SenyorDave
I think in a state like South Dakota a certain Obama feature becomes a huge issue (hint: it isn’t his large ears).
constitutional mistermix
@Gin & Tonic: Who’s lazy? Median age doesn’t tell you shit about political change in these states. The metric I would use is the increase in the number of olds, i.e., the people who vote reliably Republican. I schooled you on South Dakota above. Now let’s look at North Dakota. It will have a 50% increase in the number of over-65s by 2025, despite oil field workers, and it is now 14th in the nation in number of over-65s.
http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/yf/famsci/ec1673.pdf
That’s why we’ve lost or will lose 4 democrats from the Congressional delegations of these states in the last 10 years.
Tenar Darell
I don’t know this race so well, but is there a poll which shows what would happen if Pressler dropped out? Like in the Maine race or Kansas…
Steeplejack
@Mistermix:
Whatever the b-j.rottenchester.com thing is, it takes forever to load.
Alex
Semi-interesting thing has been vote suppression efforts on Indian reservations. I’m not sure how much media attention it’s getting.
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2014/10/24/3583565/south-dakota-native-american-voter-suppression/ for example.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Alex:
Pretty much the same as the media attention all American Indian issues get. Shameful.
Daniel'sBob
Lost the link when the power went out this morning (40 mph winds and snowflurries in Northern Illinois) but it seems Weiland is accusing the national dems–and specifically Harry Reid–of trying to sabotage his campaign by running an ad in SD that he feels will hurt him.
scav
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Yeah, I can only remember vaguely one article about it, and likely al J or Guard, so likely not front and centure on ‘mercan newsdiet.
Seanly
What? The Democratic candidate isn’t polling at only 5%? But NPR only ever talks to Republicans about the awesome Republican candidates. I was unaware that any Democratic candidates were even bothering to run against such Republican awesomeness.
srv
@Gin & Tonic: ND oil is going to crash and burn like Texas did three decades ago under cheap Saudi oil.
Let them eat cake this winter.
p.a.
I think the incompetence thing can be a plus: ooh, he can’t damage (state x) so much away there in D.C.
Yukoner
I read an article by Sean Trende at Real Clear Politics yesterday about some anomalies in the polling of the upcoming mid-term elections. Nothing particularly new or interesting but it was the comments that really gave me pause. For the majority of those commenting it is a given that if the GOP does not emerge with control of the Senate as they expect it will be due to the Democrats stealing the election through one or more versions of electoral fraud.
I know that the whole in-person electoral voting “fraud” issue is discussed here often (and especially by Kay) but somehow reading those scores of comments on what appears to be a reasonable right wing political site really brought home to me that the USA has a particularly insidious poison now firmly lodged in its body politic. If there are significant numbers of people who know (they just know!) that there is a ton of electoral fraud going on everywhere in the country all the time orchestrated by the Democrats then the whole political system is in danger.
Again, this is not a new observation but a sudden “Aha!” moment from an outside observer of American politics.
constitutional mistermix
@Alex: In addition to the long distance needed to get an early ballot, voter ID started in SD in the early 2000’s. It was just a coincidence that Daschle was up for election in 2004, and that the areas with the least number of residents with IDs are the reservations.
Daniel'sBob
Moderation? Was I immoderate?
Wyrm1
@Yukoner:
To be fair, there was a lot of that from the left wing of this country in 2004 and 2006 with all of the concerns about Diebold stealing elections and their being a lack of any paper trail. I don’t think the real issues with those voting machines have gone away, but it seems that the “voting fraud” mantra gets taken up by different groups at different times.
Here’s one about Maryland:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=10904
Overall, it seems that complaints about these machines can cross party lines, which makes me wonder why we can’t get rid of them or at least require paper trails.
Omnes Omnibus
@Wyrm1: The Help America Vote Act of 2002 requires that a permanent paper record be generated.
Elizabelle
@Yukoner:
I love how the rightwing considers itself the most patriotic, but cannot stand an election that goes against them. They declare the results illegitimate, and scream about the constitution.
They don’t actually understand or approve of democracy or history.
Elizabelle
@Wyrm1:
We’ve got a paper trail in Fairfax County, Virginia. I sleep better at night.
Kathy
@Patricia Kayden: Not surprised that an overwhelmingly White state is so deeply red.
SD has the 2nd highest percentage of indigenous population in the US.
Kathy
I was just polled by PPP.
Weiland has worked hard and visited every community in the state. He took himself from a long shot to a vary viable candidate. I weep to think how it might have been with some party support earlier in the game. I still think Rounds will pull it out. :-(
Herseth-Sandlin would have gone down in flames. Her blue-dogging alienated Democratic voters. I left the slot blank in her last re-election campaign and I imagine other Dems did as well.
Another Holocene Human
@Alex: Visit DailyKos. If you have trouble finding the right articles (they’re frontpaged, so it shouldn’t be hard) look for MeteorBlades.
Yes, same user who was helping Charles with the ACA signups data.
Another Holocene Human
@Daniel’sBob: Sorta sympathetic because the Dems have been pretty fucking tone-deaf before, but the Republicans airlifted money into that race. I’m sorry, but he’s just wrong in this case. Maybe he thinks blaming the national Dems will make him look good in SD, though.
Another Holocene Human
@Wyrm1: Those machines are a danger to democracy. We need a paper trail. And even with scantron, states that consider a recount to consist of running all the ballots through the scantron aain? That’s insane.
Touch screen hidden electronic ballots with no accountability or safeguards need to go away. If you want to use touch screen (why??) then have it print out the ballot which the voter then looks over and turns in, or goes to an election worker to have destroyed in front of him/her and do over. Actually, that could be an improvement over scantron because some people make marks on their ballots with a pen that spoil their vote.
tam1Mi
Lost the link when the power went out this morning (40 mph winds and snowflurries in Northern Illinois) but it seems Weiland is accusing the national dems–and specifically Harry Reid–of trying to sabotage his campaign by running an ad in SD that he feels will hurt him.
Howie Kurtz has been running with this line for months now…
Matt
Fuck ’em then. Let the GOP slash their Social Security checks, turn their Medicaid into worthless vouchers and grind all the asphalt roads to their houses to gravel to “keep taxes low”. Some people apparently need to learn exactly what polices they’re cheering for first-hand.