With our mighty three (3), count 'em three (3) Electoral votes, we South Dakotans have grown accustomed to the constant hue and cry of pundits and voters alike this political season, "what, oh whatever what, will South Dakota do?"
Okay, so maybe not.
But as a lifelong Dakota Democrat and Progressive, it's a question that is actually of some interest for the first time since I was in diapers, LBJ's mammoth 1964 landslide over Barry Goldwater. For the first time since then, South Dakota is in play. Pollster only has it as "leaning McCain," and the Cook Political Report has it as a tossup. The latest polls have us as a single-digit race.
I'll be the first to admit it's an outside chance. I think Nate Silver's 99:1 odds at 538 are overly pessimistic, but I'm looking at it with the cockeyed optimism of someone who wants their vote to actually be reflected in the Electoral Collage for the first time. But if it does start to look closer than the current polls as the returns stack up in South Dakota, look to Shannon County if the margin narrows to a few thousand.
Join me below the fold in the nation's second poorest county.
In my diary Little Katrinas back in April, I wrote about the aftermath of a 1999 series of tornadoes that hit Shannon County, South Dakota, which lies entirely within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home of the Oglala Oyanke. This blow was (and continues to be) compounded by the consistent, crushing poverty found there. Shannon County regularly competes with Buffalo County, South Dakota (and the Crow Creek Indian Reservation) for the dubious honor of Poorest County in the United States. Shannon is also one of only two counties in the state not to have its own county seat; the other is Todd County, home of the Rosebud Indian Reservation and the Sicangu Oyate. All Shannon County business, including the certification of all state and federal elections, must be conducted in Hot Springs, the seat of neighboring Fall River County; likewise with Todd County and Winner of Tripp County.
In addition to all of these interlocking connections, Shannon, Todd, and Buffalo counties also share the distinction of being the three most Democratic counties in South Dakota, having given respectively 84.6%, 72.2%, and 71.7% support to John Kerry in 2004. These dazzling percentages carry their greatest impact with Shannon, the largest of the three, where that 85% margin meant a vote of 3,566-526, an net gain of over 3,000 votes. (Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections; accept no substitutes.)
It's not hard to see why Senator Tim Johnson's 2002 524-vote re-election victory over John Thune was widely attributed to the Indian vote in Shannon County, and it's no wonder the Freepers (and Robert Novak) went insane, accusing the Injuns of stuffing ballot boxes. They were aided in this by how "suspiciously" late the counting for Shannon was carried out; never mind that all ballot boxes had to be carried by election officers over bad BIA roads to largely-Republican Fall River County to be counted.
And it's also no small wonder, what with that big trove of largely unanswered Democratic votes, that Shannon and Todd counties especially find themselves on the receiving end of the Republican Party's near-universal inability to resist suppress the vote of dark-skinned people whenever they think they can get away with it.
In a diary last Friday, Hypatia Rising addressed the latest shortchanging of Shannon and Todd county voters, the severe limiting of time for early voting by Shannon and Todd residents at the courthouses of neighboring counties, and its sudden rescheduling. But Native voters are a determined bunch, and Indian turnout has increased considerably in the last decade. Watch for high turnout tomorrow--but you'll have to wait a long time, as Shannon is often the county that reports last.
So, with my state sitting on the outer boundaries of "in play," if the vote in South Dakota starts to narrow considerably as the night wears on--even if the networks call it for McCain--wait and see if the vote narrows to within, say, 3,000 votes.
If it gets that close and Shannon County isn't reporting yet, Obama wins South Dakota.
Progressive Witness