Former President Donald Trump
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (SOUTH DAKOTA NEWS WATCH) – Former President Donald Trump leads President Joe Biden by nearly 20 points in South Dakota but is struggling to get more than half of the statewide vote, according to a scientific poll of 500 registered voters co-sponsored by South Dakota News Watch.
Trump was at 50%, well ahead of Biden’s 31% in the poll, which was also sponsored by the Chiesman Center for Democracy at the University of South Dakota.
Third-party challenger Robert Kennedy Jr., who is not yet on the ballot in the state, polled at 11% percent, while 7% were undecided.
Those holdouts are keeping former President Trump from matching his previous election share of 62% in South Dakota the last two presidential cycles – against Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020. Trump won the presidency in 2016 and lost in 2020.
A similar Mason-Dixon poll in October 2020 showed Trump at 51% in South Dakota (with 6% undecided), but the former Manhattan real estate mogul and reality TV star came in 11 points higher than that number on Election Day.
There could also be major movement this time around, said Jon Schaff, a political science professor at Northern State University in Aberdeen.
“The support you’re seeing for (RFK Jr.) is not uncommon for a quasi-significant third-party candidate at this stage of the game,” said Schaff. “When you get closer to the election and people realize that candidate doesn’t have a chance of winning, voters tend to drift back to a major-party candidate. And so I suspect that 11% (for Kennedy) will go down.”
The only third-party candidate to reach double-digits in South Dakota in the past century was Texas billionaire Ross Perot, who finished third in 1992 with 22% behind Republican George H.W. Bush (41%) and Democrat Bill Clinton (37%). Clinton won nationally against the incumbent Bush.
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