The interview posted above is from SDPB's daily public affairs show, In the Moment with Lori Walsh.
New polling information suggests there is a significant gender gap disparity among potential South Dakota voters when it comes to who they plan to support in the upcoming race for governor.
According to the SDSU Poll’s data released on Tuesday, Oct. 11, Republican incumbent Gov. Kristi Noem has more support among male voters, while Democratic candidate Jamie Smith has more support among female voters.
Overall, Noem leads Smith by four percentage points - 45% to 41% - which is within the poll's margin of error. The SDSU Poll director Dr. David Wiltse said last week on In the Moment with Lori Walsh that the race was within a few points. Tuesday's full report dove deeper into the numbers.
When it came to women voters, Noem's support dropped to 39%, while Smith's rose to 48%. For men, 52% said they would vote for Noem, while 36% would vote for Smith.
The new information showed a similar gender disparity in South Dakota’s U.S. Senate race. Of the voters polled, 52% said they would vote for Republican incumbent Sen. John Thune over his Democratic challenger, Brian Bengs. This dropped to 45% among women but rose to 57% among men.
The SDSU Poll director David Wiltse said this split among gender is not necessarily a result of the candidates themselves. Instead, it is a signal of the growing relation between party and gender across the country.
“There has been a widening gap on the national basis, and South Dakota is just reflecting that,” Wiltse said. “More and more women are gravitating towards the Democratic Party. More and more men are gravitating towards the Republican Party.”
The gubernatorial poll showed 14% of respondents were still undecided. Wiltse said he expects most of these to end up voting along party lines, which is likely good news for Noem.
“Most of these folks are essentially going to gravitate towards their preferred party,” Wiltse said. “In this particular case, we would assume that most of them will be heading towards, or nor most, but a majority will be heading the governor’s way simply because of the partisan structure here in South Dakota.”
The new data also showed that candidate preference is closely tied to party affiliation, although not as much for Republicans as for Democrats.
According to the data, 91% of Democrats polled said they would vote for Smith, while only 80% of Republicans said they would vote for Noem. Of the remaining Republicans, 13% said they were not sure, while 6% gave the same response.
Wiltse said that this level of polarization among parties is a trend across the country as a whole.
“We just don’t have that kind of ticket-splitting that we did 20 or 30 years ago, where people would vote for a Republican on one race and a Democrat on another race,” Wiltse said.
The SDSU Poll is a non-partisan research group housed in the School of American and Global Studies at South Dakota State University, according to Wiltse. Their latest poll consisted of a survey of over 500 registered voters in the state. There is a 4% margin of error.