Where did all the Democrats go? Update in the comments.

There is much discussion in the press and on blogs about the declining number of Democratic voter registrations in South Dakota. There is an explanation that most would not like to hear:

Democrats are leaving the state--both mentally and physically.

Some illustrative perspectives on that:


The demographics are changing, with young people migrating out and older people moving in.  As long as I have been in South Dakota in higher education, a perennial concern has been the outmigration of young people, particularly those with talent and ambition.  This has been a trend in South Dakota since statehood, when Hamlin Garland examined the forces that drove the children of homesteaders to look for and make lives for themselves elsewhere.  In the time I taught at a South Dakota university, the administration and faculty were in constant discussion over where young people were going and why.

The tracking of students revealed a pattern among college-age students that became an entrenched custom.  The most talented and achieving high school students left the state after graduation to attend out-of-state colleges which lured them with scholarships and prestigious programs.  Of those South Dakota students who attended state colleges, most of them regarded their education as preparation to find more rewarding and fulfilling lives in other places.  At one time, a college president enraged the regents and many citizens when he promoted the idea that an education at his South Dakota institution would prepare them for successful lives elsewhere.  He coined the slogan for Northern State as the "Gateway Institution" and was sternly advised to abandon that approach.  It did address the expectations of the students.  

The fact was that when most South Dakota students graduated from their state colleges, they did, in fact, seek and find work or post-graduate education outside the state.  Students of talent and ambition found that the social and political climate in South Dakota discouraged intellectual work and lifestyles.  Not until recent years did the regents acknowledge that fact and attempt to take measures for higher education that would be conducive to intellectual work.  The conversion of the Homestake Goldmine into the Sanford Underground Laboratory was catalytic in the attempt to change the state's reputation for intellectual work and research. 

Intellectual work thrives in a liberal climate, liberal in the sense that it is open to diversity, exploration, and innovation.  

The state struggles to provide opportunities for the educated and ambitious.  They generally trend toward Democratic political attitudes because of its support for equality in civil rights and educational opportunities which allow people to explore and choose lifestyles that the more staid citizenry is upset by.  So, the outmigration of the young and talented continues.

Other factors that reduce the number of people who have Democratic sympathies are in the attrition process.  In this aspect,  I have witnessed what takes place in a population sample.  For many years, I have been involved in maintaining a list of the most active Democrats in  and around Brown County.   We spent a considerable effort in compiling this list.  In recent years, it has shrunk to about half the size that it was at its peak.  Every month, when we make mailings, we get returned mail from those who have died or moved away.  And as older people are removed from the list for these reasons, there are few younger people to replace them.  It is not that the younger people incline to the other party; it's that the other party has become so offensively small-minded and obsessed with its scurrilous malignity and oppression of women and minorities that younger people of discernment find party politics too degrading and offensive to be a part of it.

This was illustrated before the election of 2010 when I was approached to help recruit some candidates to run for Senate against John Thune.   I have mentioned this a number of times, but some very qualified and able potential candidates emphatically declined to become candidates because they did not want to expose themselves and their families to the kind of destructive nastiness that campaigns have become.  The candidates were fully acquainted with the political process and pointed out the permanent damage that political campaigns inflict upon candidates and families.  As a result, John Thune ran unopposed.

One of the potential candidates had a very hefty file of materials from the Daschle/Thune campaign that he studied in making his decision.  He said the person who could meet the Thune campaign on the terms that Thune operated on is not kind of the person he could vote for.  The voters decided who they wanted, he said, and endorsed Thune's campaign.  In so doing, they have identified what they conceived the state to be, and that is not a state the potential candidate could serve, he said.  

That person is one of those who has, in effect, left the state.  He expanded his business interests to another state and has gradually shifted his concentration to that  state, where his family has moved.  The success of his business is the deciding factor for the family's move to another state over political climate, but politics cannot be dismissed as having an important role.  A big question is why some kinds of business, particularly those requiring high levels of education and intellectual skills, do not find potential for growth in South Dakota. The question goes right back to the reasons for the outmigration of young people.  

The man during a conversation once remarked that misplaced sentimental loyalties impede progress and damage lives that have great potential.  He remarked that many South Dakotans do not realize that the spirit of the settlers who formed the state moved with their children.  

In one discussion I had with potential candidates, one of them posed the proposition that for someone from South Dakota it was difficult to oppose bad programs that poured money into the state.  If one wanted to deal with South Dakota's professed conservatism while clamoring for federal funds, it would be better to be in another state where Congressional representatives could vote against South Dakota pork with impunity.   While the remarks were made somewhat facetiously, they say something about the South Dakota constituency and the stark opposition between what they want candidates to profess on the surface but practice on the Congressional floor.



Many Democrats have simply ceded South Dakota to the Republicans and are too busy trying to arrange their lives for other possibilities to devote time or energy to politics.  A dynamic leader might raise some hope in the minds of the liberal-leaning, but the reality is that the majority will cast the deciding vote that shapes the nature of the state.

For many people from South Dakota,  it is a good place to leave.