On a night when Democrats made major gains across the country, South Dakota emerged as one of the few Republican strongholds where the GOP largely held its ground — even as Democrats made inroads around Sioux Falls.
Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden won roughly 63.5% of the vote Tuesday, nearly matching President Donald Trump’s 63.4% performance in 2024. Republicans also swept the state’s other statewide races and maintained overwhelming control of the legislature, despite Democrats picking up four seats.
Rhoden’s victory came against Democrat Dan Ahlers, who described himself as a “conservative Democrat” and campaigned on affordability, rural healthcare, education and other kitchen table issues. But his moderate pitch did little to narrow the GOP’s commanding statewide advantage, with Ahlers finishing at just 36.5% of the vote.
South Dakota’s results stood in contrast to several other deeply Republican states where the GOP maintained control but saw its margins shrink considerably. In Idaho and Wyoming, Republican gubernatorial candidates won comfortably but finished with smaller shares of the vote than President Donald Trump secured in 2024. South Dakota’s gubernatorial result, by comparison, remained virtually unchanged.
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David Jolly, the Democratic nominee in Florida, ran a campaign with similar themes to Ahlers’ — pointing to the fact that he used to be a Republican and, like Ahlers, prioritized affordability and healthcare while on the campaign trail. Jolly cut the GOP’s vote share to just 50%, roughly six points below the party’s 2024 presidential performance. Tennessee’s Democratic gubernatorial nominee inflicted a similarly sharp cut on Republicans’ margins by employing a similar strategy.
Even down the ballot, South Dakota Republicans largely held their ground, though Democrats managed to flip four legislative seats in the Sioux Falls area, marking their first legislative gains in the state since 2008.
The losses were concentrated around the state’s largest city, where a growing population and a less conservative political landscape have created more opportunities for Democrats, according to University of South Dakota political scientist Julia Hellwege. Opposition to large data-center projects also resonated with some voters in the area, according to a local Democratic official.
“South Dakota Republicans did well because we took on the issues that mattered to the people of our state and delivered real results for them,” South Dakota’s Republican House speaker, Jon Hansen, told Fox News Digital. “The bottom line is that we ran on tackling the issues that mattered to people, and then we delivered real results for the people on those issues. Not just talk, not just excuses, but real solutions. It’s what our people deserve, and it’s what we delivered for them.”
Hansen pointed to property tax cuts enacted by the legislature, regulations aimed at preventing utility costs from rising amid data center build-outs, curbing corporate eminent domain and balancing the state’s budget, among other efforts, as crucial in the South Dakota GOP’s success on Tuesday night.
South Dakota’s unemployment rate has been hovering around 2% since last September, roughly half the rate of the United States at large. Average wages also increased by about 4% in the state over the course of 2025. All of this occurred as South Dakota remained one of the most affordable states in the country, though rising rent costs outpaced wage growth in 2025, according to data collected by Realtor.com.
At the federal level, Republican Sen. Mike Rounds cruised to victory with 60.5% of the vote, though the GOP wasn’t entirely immune to the national shift. South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley won the state’s at-large congressional seat with roughly 64% of the vote, down from the 72% fellow Republican Dusty Johnson secured in 2024.
South Dakota’s relatively modest legislative losses stood in sharp contrast to other Republican strongholds. In Texas, Democrats flipped 21 GOP-held state House seats, while Republicans in New Hampshire were on track to fall from the 222 House seats they won in 2024 to just 107.
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Republicans in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan all lost control of at least one chamber of their state legislatures on Tuesday night.
“Those Republicans who lost on Nov. 3 did so because their actions (or inaction) didn’t match their promises to voters. We didn’t have that problem in South Dakota under our leadership,” South Dakota’s GOP House Majority Leader, Rep. Scott Odenbach, told Fox News Digital.