Argus claims SD Democrats lost in 2016 because of “partisan gerrymandering?” Now that’s fake news if I’ve ever heard it.

Looking for a prime example of FAKE NEWS? Look no farther than the Argus Leader.  They just posted a video online with a ridiculous claim that South Dakota Democrats “had a harder time winning in 2016 because of partisan gerrymandered districts.”

Wow.

That’s fake news if I ever heard it, and seems to be in the realm of what we’d call journalistic malpractice.

I’d call it an embarrassingly shallow analysis.. but that would assume that someone bothered to actually analyze something.    It seems that someone created a bullsh*t headline, and now there will be a story framed to try to support it.

Unfortunately, the premise is utterly indefensible.

If you look at South Dakota’s political environment, starting out, Democrats in 2016 were already at near historic lows in offices (by doing many of the same things they’ve done for several cycles)

First and foremost, DEMOCRATS FAILED TO FIELD CANDIDATES!  It’s a proven fact that if you don’t run candidates for an office, you will not win that race. In fact, just in the State Senate, before the first vote was counted, Democrats conceded 1/4-1/3 of races by not running anyone.

And later in the cycle, for those candidates who remained to contest Republicans, Democrat state party finances did not provide the basis to support candidates in any significant way.  Instead, Democrats invested their time and efforts into ballot measures instead of political races.

That is, for the money they did spend. A series of post-election meetings across the state noted that Democrats ended the campaign sitting on $100,000 that was unspent during this time of record losses.

Add to that they’ve consistently run weak candidates at the top of the ticket for several cycles. When you have candidates an unlikable as Hillary Clinton at the top of the ticket followed by a candidate as inept as Jay Williams, who spent NO money, had no organization, and told everyone he wanted to raise taxes, it’s not much of a choice.

Hmm… people I don’t like, who say they’ll raise my taxes, or the other guys?  Let me think…

In South Dakota, our redistricting abilities are pretty limited, given that it part of the rules requires that geographic and natural boundaries be followed. As noted in the constitution:

§ 5.   Legislative reapportionment. The Legislature shall apportion its membership by dividing the state into as many single-member, legislative districts as there are state senators. House districts shall be established wholly within senatorial districts and shall be either single-member or dual-member districts as the Legislature shall determine. Legislative districts shall consist of compact, contiguous territory and shall have population as nearly equal as is practicable, based on the last preceding federal census.

Read that here.

I’ve been around for three of these now, and I can tell you there’s not a lot of ways to slice it up and follow those rules.

In fact, for two of them, Democrats picked up seats after the redistricting, and then slowly lost them. At the time of the last redistricting, Democrats were beginning their party’s slide into their current state of disorganization, and wasn’t able to capitalize on people not knowing their current representatives and senators as they had before.

Democrats being at a disadvantage has utterly nothing to do with redistricting. In this case, it’s on them, period.

No matter how hard the those in the media try to manufacture a fairy tale. Because the truth is far simpler.

16 thoughts on “Argus claims SD Democrats lost in 2016 because of “partisan gerrymandering?” Now that’s fake news if I’ve ever heard it.”

  1. It is well known that politically South Dakota is heavily gerrymandered by the governing party in the state. For someone to go on I believe it was KELO TV last year and say there was no gerrymandering going on with a straight face was pretty darn good and I’ll bet is a good poker player too! 🙂

    The ones I’d point out for example are Brown County and around the Aberdeen area, Rapid City and Frank Kloucek’s old district.

    Do I believe Gerrrymandering was the sole reason for the poor performance of the SDDP to gain seats? Absolutely not! A number of factors contributed to it some of which were self inflicted yet there were a few very good candidates that worked their tails off, that were reasonable and well respected yet still lost. Many of those candidates got caught up in the Trump Tsunami which the Democrats caught the brunt of it in rural areas but the Republican Party paid a price for it too. Some voters felt so disenfranchised with both party’s conducting business as usual that they threw a hand grenade into the room to shake things up with voting for Trump.

    1. What’s the example in Brown County? You’d have to ignore the fact that Dems used to outnumber Republicans but NOW there are more registered Republicans in Brown County… The county lines haven’t been redrawn. Go back to the excuse drawing board. Try blaming Russia I hear that helps lol

      1. Hey Rich,

        As seen in this past election Brown County is losing Democrats and I would attribute much of that as being self inflicted with many being turned off by whom we both know and what he represents and is driving many away from the party. The Brown County GOP is doing a heck of a job, is well organized, working hard and is focused

  2. Pat,

    It is easier for the SDDP to blame gerrymandering for their inept performance.

    It is easier for the Argus to blame changing media market forces for their need to eviscerate their reporting functions and just write uninformed comments editorials instead of news stories.

    The march to oblivion sounds like this. And these to institutions are marching together.

  3. Troy,

    I cannot believe that the SDDP would blame their failure solely on Gerrymanding.

  4. If the argus says it, then it is wrong. There is not a worse source for information in the entire publishing world.

  5. It was Obama before redistricting. Democrats tried to take SD Senate but failed. Two years later they were wiped out in same districts.

  6. Brown County is a poor example to prove their point. Joe Barnett was a force and delivered 6 legislators for Aberdeen for over two decades. When he was gone, they paid the price. It’s not a partisan gerrymandering issue

    The augie prof should know enough about math, demographics and voter distribution to pick apart this analysis. Sad comment that she didn’t . When “wasted votes” (a racist comment in this context) are concentrated in remote parts of state covered by Dept of Justice standards, if you want to move those democrat votes to districts where they have impact, the districts will look like snakes. So the appropriate response to the premise of the story is ….duh!

  7. There are about 85,000 more Rep registered than Dem in SD. If you divide that number by the number of legislative districts (35) in the state, that equates to, on average, almost 2400 more Rep than Dem per district. If the Rep legislature really wanted to gerrymander they could make it so there is NO district with a Dem majority. But that is not the case, there are laws that have to be followed, and that is why there are districts with more Dems. Does gerrymandering occur? Maybe somewhat on a small scale in some locales, but no way does that have any impact on our legislature. I repeat, the Reps could have all districts with Rep majorities of about 2400 each.

  8. Another way to prove or disprove the assertion of Republican gerrymandering is to ask Democrats what their proposed legislative district boundaries look like. If the current result is wrong, what does “right” look like?

    I remember that the 1990 redistricting in Sioux Falls resulted in several proposed versions that were presented to the legislature for evaluation. Wonder if the minutes of the 2011 committee include the Democrats’ proposals?

    1. What I remember about the 1990 redistricting, was how defeated Republican former State Senator Randy Austad got the redistricting committee to carve out a bizarre shaped legislative district for him, which started in Brandon, ignored Sioux Falls, then wrapped around all the way to Tea, South Dakota. This district was 10 and this happened after Austad lost in a close race to Linda Stensland in District 14 in 1990.

      But it was to no avail, however, because then Austad lost to Brandon’s, Chet Jones, in the “New” District 10 in 1992.

  9. Seems like the voters already dismissed these Democrat ideas in the last election when Amendment T was defeated.

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