South Dakota Sharply Polarized as the 2022 Election Approaches

The 2022 South Dakota Election Study was conducted between Sept. 28 and Oct. 10, 2022 by The South Dakota Polling Project, a non-partisan research group housed in the School of American and Global Studies at South Dakota State University. This poll is similar to election surveys The South Dakota Polling Project conducted in May 2022 and October 2020. In this survey, 565 registered South Dakota voters answered questions about the upcoming November election. The margin of error of this survey was +/- 4 percent, on par with other state-wide polls.

“Feelings Thermometers” are a common and intuitive measure used by political scientists to measure the support of political leaders. A score of 0 indicates the coldest feelings towards the subject, 100 the warmest feelings, and 50 represents neutrality. This allows us to get more sensitive measures of support than approval ratings widely used in other polls and gives us better differentiation between politicians - particularly of the same party. We use these extensively at The South Dakota Polling Project and have tracked several political figures since our inception in 2020.

The General Electorate. President Joe Biden remains the least-liked politician among our respondents. His rating is just about 31, virtually identical to his standing in our May 2022 poll. Rep. Dusty Johnson and Sens. Thune and Rounds remain on top of our overall ratings with scores of 52, 51 and 50, respectively. Gov. Noem scores 46, whilst her rival Jaime Smith scores 41, reflecting the closeness of that contest. Meanwhile, Trump’s rating is at 35; down 10 points from his rating in our May poll.

Gov. Noem Remains the Most Popular Politician Amongst Republicans, While President Trump’s Rating Took a Tumble. Noem continues to be the highest-rated Republican figure amongst our Republican respondents with a score of 74. This popularity endures despite a challenge from the right in the June primary. Such challenges of incumbents typically signal a weakness amongst party loyalists, but that just didn’t materialize in her case. What is of particular note is the sharp drop of Trump, with a score of 58, his lowest score since our polling began in 2020. We will discuss the trends below.

The congressional delegation continues to sit relatively close to one another, and below the rating of the governor. Johnson sits at 65, Thune at 69 and Rounds at 68. All within the 4% margin of error.

Unsurprisingly, President Biden and Jamie Smith do quite poorly with ratings of 9 and 18, respectively. Smith’s 9-point advantage over Biden suggests that attempts to link the two together in campaign messaging are having mixed results.

Long-Term Trends Amongst Republicans. As noted above, this poll has seen some marked shifts in the popularity of several political figures within the state’s Republican voters. Of particular note is the fate of Trump. At no point in our previous polls in October 2020, April 2021, August 2021 and May 2022 did Trump drop below our congressional delegation as it has now. His rating took a precipitous drop from 73 to 58. In the past few months, Trump has seen a lot of bad press centering on the Jan. 6 investigation of the U.S. House and the document seizures at Mar-a-Lago. These developments have seemingly taken a toll on his popularity.

Rounds and Thune have seen a clear increase in their popularity amongst their fellow Republicans. Gaining back much of the grounds they had lost between October 2020 and May 2022.  Johnson’s rating in this poll saw a small bump from May as well.

As for Noem, her status as the most popular political figure amongst Republicans is unchallenged. Though visually there is a small drop in her rating, it is non-significant given the margin of error in each poll.

This is our final press release of the year. We hope that the poll results we have presented help explain political events and the opinions of the South Dakota electorate.

Contributors: David Wiltse Ph.D. and Filip Viskupič Ph.D.