So far, tonight’s election is a wild ride. Driven by very low turnout.

Pat Powers

Have you ever wondered what kind of election you would have if nobody was on the top of the ticket, and nobody really cared?

That would be what we ended up with tonight for the 2024 primary election campaign. As we wait for many results to roll in from West River, it’s 11 o’clock at night, and we have yet to hit 13% voter turnout.

It’s bad. Not just a little bad, but really distorted from what we might logically expect from election results.  Let me show you one of my bellwether elections that I’ve been watching;

This is the race where election conspiracy fetishist Rick Weible ran against Senate majority leader Casey Crabtree.

Senator Crabtree ran a reasonably strong and effective campaign in his race as an incumbent to return to the leader ship of the State Senate. Rick Weible didn’t.

In fact, Weible literally did nothing except run an bad joint ad in the local shopper paper that never changed, and the highlight of his campaign was him talking about how his life was in danger from knowing secrets about election equipment.

Yet somehow, in spite of his doing nothing but occasional goofiness, Weible achieved 28% of the vote. The previous ‘dead cat bounce’ in typical years, where a candidate could run against a dead cat, and the dead cat would receive 18 to 20% of the vote, has been elevated closer to 30% because of the unusually low turnout, amplifying the influence of the hard hard right.

And it is playing some electoral chaos so far this evening with no fewer than six incumbents unseated with shocking results in other races as I write this.

These results would not be happening two years from now with possibly three major primary contests ahead of the legislative races. But in a year when most people didn’t even realize there was an election, the unexpected is status quo.

Keep watching the results. Because I’m sure the ride isn’t even close to being over.

35 thoughts on “So far, tonight’s election is a wild ride. Driven by very low turnout.”

    1. This is a lesson to legislators in the echo chamber. Lobbyists, leadership and the associations are not necessarily looking out for you or your district. Don’t blindly follow them – work with them but do whats best for your district.

    1. Youngberg ran an honorable campaign and Pischke didn’t. Not sure if you a Game of Thrones fan, but honor has no place in politics anymore.

      1. Pischke ran a negative campaign through Toby Doedens PACs let’s get real. Special interest Doeden money and low turnout is why youngberg got blown out. It’s sad this is what Politics in SD look like now. I give credit to youngberg for not responding and being negative, there is plenty of subject matter there with Tom and Youngberg took the high road. How’s that saying go “ nice guys finish last?”

    2. Some of them do. The negative Youngberg ads and texts were pretty wild. Apparently, if you’re not with Pischke, you are Joe Biden? It was certainly a good night for the wackadoodles.

  3. Your analysis is off because of your assumption that Crabtree will “return to leadership of the State Senate.”

    1. I’m hearing Crabtree and mortenson’s leadership is in jeopardy. That’s the kind of night it was.

      1. Crabtree is very capable, but Mortenson is one of the least liked and respected legislators to serve in leadership…and that’s saying something.

  4. This is exactly why it’s a dumb idea to move constitutional races to a primary. Low turnout. No one knows who the down ballot candidates are. They show up for the top and guess for the rest.

    1. I think the low turnout today supports the opposite argument. The more statewide races on the ballot, the more likely to generate additional voter interest. 2026 will already be a wild year, now imagine adding a (likely) open AG race and a (very likely) contested Secretary of State match to the ballot. Could triple tonight’s turnout.

      1. No one even cares about congressional primaries. So no they won’t turn out for a 3 candidate AG race that generates $300k in total spending.

        President, gov and marquee senate races.

        Minnehaha has elected cole heisey and Leah Anderson in primaries.

  5. D21 results are wild, and I am here for the ride! No to hand count, Tobin out – and Qualm lost… Choo-choo, all abord the crazy train!

  6. We need ranked-choice and final-five voting. Otherwise, it is just a mobilization battle rather than persuasion battle.

    Also, same day registration would be helpful. Tried to vote today, but was rejected, because I hadn’t properly updated my address. Lesson learned.

  7. Here in the Northeast, all of the “Zoo Rats” that Pat labeled them all lost and some not even close.
    District 3 Senate Carl Perry defeated Katie Washnok
    District 1 House both Logan Manhart & Chris Reder knocked out the Inc Tamara St. John
    Brown County Commission Kyler Dinger(who had the most votes) & Duane Sutton beat Michael Carlsen
    District 23 Senate Mark Lapka beat Steve Roseland
    District 23 House Rep Scott Moore & Spencer Gosch beat Rep JD Wangsness(He finished 3rd in his own county)
    All candidates did interviews with HubCityRadio to promote their campaigns in the last two weeks prior to election. The studiosdid everything they could to get people out to vote.
    The big winner of the night here was Toby Doeden who endorsed all those candidates with the exception of Duane Sutton and they all won. Those are the facts.

    1. Toby Doeden is a venereal disease. Hope you all had fun getting in bed with him – now have fun paying the price when he “holds you accountable” to him and his definition of “conservative”. There’s enough penicillin in a tristate area to clear up that massive bloated wart! Good luck, not someone I’d want to be beholden to!

      1. I hope the AG gets his phone and email records and goes after every candidate who worked with him

    2. Umm… most of the money and lobbyists drive into Pierre from Sioux Falls and are in pierre for 40 days.

  8. Low turnout is because voters didn’t see anybody on either side worth the effort

    1. I disagree; I found out a lot of people I talked to were not even aware there was an election and when told, said they never bother to vote in the primary.

      1. If who you talked to never vote in the primary, who you talked to aren’t why the turnout was low.

        As Wm. Shakespeare said: “A plague on both your houses.”

        While they all deserve themselves, none of us deserve them. We want different choices, like adults.

  9. So it’s time for people like Jamison and Bahmuller to step up and run for leadership. We need to have people who can bring the party together not further divide it.

    2. Step 1: know the issues
      Step 2: be a natural leader
      Step 3: be a resource to your fellow legislators
      Step 4: consider leadership

      This isn’t optional. Only those that can check the first three should consider step 4

    1. Him and Youngberg got annihilated. I think the GOP split is pretty well complete after this election.

  11. 28A is a big loss.

    I only hope Jana Hunt can defeat the Democrat candidate who is an absolute extremist, activist, whack-a-doodle. Someone who has no business being in Pierre.

    There are a lot of blue votes in 28A. It would seem to me that having a Republican who can win some of them would be a good thing. We gave that up yesterday.

      1. Carl Petersen. An avowed Bernie Sanders democratic socialist fan–and that’s among his more mainstream beliefs.

    1. Look at these absolutely abhorrent voter turn out numbers – all last night showed us was that the grand majority of the state doesn’t actually give a flying F about SB201. If they did – we would have had record numbers out to vote, which we did not.

      The loud annoying minority showed up to vote thanks to fear mongering, retaliation and power grab. And unfortunately they succeeded. Now all of South Dakota will have to pay the price as the off the rails far right and newly elected one issue idiots try to stumble their way through trying to run out state!
      May God have mercy on us all!

    2. People aren’t happy with the imaginary version of SB 201 the anti pipeline folks are lying to them about. You know, the one that takes away property rights.

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