At one point today, a reader informed me that the South Dakota Republican Party was showing a voter registration advantage of 99,996 voters over the Democrat Party. (Current numbers as of this writing are 158899 Democrats to 258873 Republicans), putting the GOP on track to break the barrier of a 100,000 voter advantage in South Dakota, likely at some point during this week.
The 100k mark is a purely psychological one, as the GOP is nearly at that mark, but it represents and underlines the dominance of the Republican Party in South Dakota as pitted against an atrophied and largely vestigial presence of Democrats in the state.
Democrats are not just fighting a 100k lead by the GOP, but they also find themselves in danger of being overtaken by Independents, who currently stand at 129349 votes, putting Democrats at just less than a 30,000 vote advantage over independents/no party affiliation.
As recently as 2006, state Democrats had managed to whittle the party registration difference down to fewer than a 37,000 vote difference (07/06/2009 – GOP 242,774 to Dems 206,086), but the intervening years have not been kind to the donkeys. While the GOP continues to add and is hitting record peaks of registrants, Democrats have increasingly shed voters who find it more palatable to identify as independent.
Keep watching the running tally. Because the SDGOP is getting ready to mark a milestone.
Good!
During that time you showed Wow Dems have lost 50,000 voters